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THE   LAND  OF   LITTLE   RAIN 


PETITE    PETE   (Page  157) 


THE   LAND 

OF 

LITTLE    RAI  N 


BY 


MARY   AUSTIN 


A  ^.r.o. 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 

HOUGHTON,   MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

(3tfte  iRiterjsilJe  }^u0,  Cambriboe 

1904 


utC  ii;u4 


\^a  70 


COPYRIGHT    1903    BY    MARY   AUSTIN 
ALL    RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Published  October  iqos 


THIRD   IMPRESSION 


-I 

i  TO   EVE 

ri 

,'  "THE    COMFORTRESS    OF    UNSUCCESS 


u 


I 


PREFACE 


CONFESS  to  a  great  liking  for  the 


Indian  fashion  of  name-giving:  every 
man  known  by  that  phrase  which  best  ex- 
presses him  to  whoso  names  him.  Thus 
he  may  be  Mighty- Hunter,  or  Man-Afraid- 
of-a-Bear,  according  as  he  is  called  by 
friend  or  enemy,  and  Scar-Face  to  those 
who  knew  him  by  the  eye's  grasp  only. 
No  other  fashion,  I  think,  sets  so  well  with 
the  various  natures  that  inhabit  in  us,  and 
if  you  agree  with  me  you  will  understand 
why  so  few  names  are  written  here  as  they 
appear  in  the  geography.  For  if  I  love  a 
lake  known  by  the  name  of  the  man  who 
discovered  it,  which  endears  itself  by  reason 
vii 


PREFACE 

of  the  close-locked  pines  it  nourishes  about 
its  borders,  you  may  look  in  my  account  to 
find  it  so  described.  But  if  the  Indians 
have  been  there  before  me,  you  shall  have 
their  name,  which  is  always  beautifully  fit 
and  does  not  originate  in  the  poor  human 
desire  for  perpetuity. 

Nevertheless  there  are  certain  peaks,  ca- 
nons, and  clear  meadow  spaces  which  are 
above  all  compassing  of  words,  and  have  a 
certain  fame  as  of  the  nobly  great  to  whom 
we  give  no  familiar  names.  Guided  by 
these  you  may  reach  my  country  and  find 
or  not  find,  according  as  it  lieth  in  you, 
much  that  is  set  down  here.  And  more. 
The  earth  is  no  wanton  to  give  up  all  her 
best  to  every  comer,  but  keeps  a  sweet, 
separate  intimacy  for  each.     But  if  you  do 


PREFACE 

not  find  it  all  as  I  write,  think  me  not  less 
dependable  nor  yourself  less  clever.  There 
is  a  sort  of  pretense  allowed  in  matters  of 
the  heart,  as  one  should  say  by  way  of 
illustration,  "  I  know  a  man  who  .  .  .  ," 
and  so  give  up  his  dearest  experience  with- 
out betrayal.  And  I  am  in  no  mind  to 
direct  you  to  delectable  places  toward 
which  you  will  hold  yourself  less  tenderly 
than  I.  So  by  this  fashion  of  naming  I 
keep  faith  with  the  land  and  annex  to  my 
own  estate  a  very  great  territory  to  which 
none  has  a  surer  title. 

The  country  where  you  may  have  sight 
and  touch  of  that  which  is  written  lies 
between  the  high  Sierras  south  from  Yo- 
semite  —  east  and  south  over  a  very  great 
assemblage  of  broken  ranges  beyond  Death 
ix 


PREFACE 

Valley,  and  on  inimitably  into  the  Mojave 
Desert,  You  may  come  into  the  borders 
of  it  from  the  south  by  a  stage  journey  that 
has  the  effect  of  involving  a  great  lapse  of 
time,  or  from  the  north  by  rail,  dropping 
out  of  the  overland  route  at  Reno.  The 
best  of  all  ways  is  over  the  Sierra  passes 
by  pack  and  trail,  seeing  and  believing. 
But  the  real  heart  and  core  of  the  country 
are  not  to  be  come  at  in  a  month's  vacation. 
One  must  summer  and  winter  with  the  land 
and  wait  its  occasions.  Pine  woods  that 
take  two  and  three  seasons  to  the  ripening 
of  cones,  roots  that  lie  by  in  the  sand  seven 
years  awaiting  a  growing  rain,  firs  that 
grow  fifty  years  before  flowering,  —  these 
do  not  scrape  acquaintance.  But  if  ever 
you  come  beyond  the  borders  as  far  as  the 


PREFACE 

town  that  lies  in  a  hill  dimple  at  the  foot 
of  Kearsarge,  never  leave  it  until  you  have 
knocked  at  the  door  of  the  brown  house 
under  the  willow-tree  at  the  end  of  the 
village  street,  and  there  you  shall  have 
such  news  of  the  land,  of  its  trails  and 
what  is  astir  in  them,  as  one  lover  of  it  can 
give  to  another. 


XI 


NOTE    ON    THE   ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Publishers  feel  that  they  have  been  pecul- 
iarly fortunate  in  securing  Mr.  E.  Boyd  Smith 
as  the  illustrator  and  interpreter  of  Mrs.  Austin's 
charming  sketches  of  the  "  Land  of  Little  Rain." 
His  familiarity  with  the  region  and  his  rare  ar- 
tistic skill  have  enabled  him  to  give  the  very 
atmosphere  of  the  desert,  and  graphically  to  por- 
tray its  life,  animal  and  human.  This  will  be  felt 
not  only  in  the  full-page  compositions,  but  in  the 
delightful  marginal  sketches,  which  are  not  less 
illustrative,  although,  from  their  nature,  it  is  im- 
practicable to  enumerate  them  in  a  formal  list. 


CONTENTS 


PAGB 


The  Land  of  Little  Rain  ,         .         .         .  i 

Water  Trails  of  the  Ceriso  ...  23 

The  Scavengers 45 

The  Pocket  Hunter          ....  61 

Shoshone  Land 81 

JiMviLLE  —  A  Bret  Harte  Town      .         .  103 

J)/lv  Neighbor's  Field 123 

The  Mesa  Trail 141 

The  Basket  Maker       .....  161 

The  Streets  of  the  Mountains      .        .  181 
Water  Borders      .         .         .         .         .         .203 

Other  Water  Borders      ....  223 

Nurslings  of  the  Sky 243 

The  Little  Town  of  the  Grape  Vines  .  263 


THE    LAND   OF   LITTLE    RAIN 


THE    LAND    OF   LITTLE    RAIN 

EAST  away  from  the  Sierras,  south 
from  Panamint  and  Amargosa,  east 
and  south  many  an  uncounted  mile,  is  the 
Country  of  Lost  Borders. 

Ute,  Paiute,  Mojave,  and  Shoshone  in- 
habit its  frontiers,  and  as  far  into  the  heart 
of  it  as  a  man  dare  go.     Not  the  law,  but  \^' 

the  land  sets  the  limit.     Desert  is  the  name 
it  wears  upon  the  maps,  but  the  Indian's 
is  the  better  word.     Desert  is  a  loose  term 
to    indicate    land    that  supports   no  man; 
^   whether  the  land  can  be  bitted  and  broken 
\    to  that  purpose  is  not  proven.    Void  of.^fe 
^    it  never  is,  however  dry  the  air  and  villA- 
ous  the  soil. 

This    is    the    nature    of    that    country. 
There   are    hills,   rounded,   blunt,  burned, 
3 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

squeezed  up  out  of  chaos,  chrome  and  ver- 
milion painted,  aspiring  to  the  snow-Hne. 
Between  the  hills  lie  hisjh  level-looking 
plains  full  of  intolerable  sun  glare,  or  nar- 
row valleys  drowned  in  a  blue  haze.  The 
hill  surface  is  streaked  with  ash  drift  and 
black,  unweathered  lava  flows.  After  rains 
water  accumulates  in  the  hollows  of  small 
closed  valleys,  and,  evaporating,  leaves  hard 
dry  levels  of  pure  desertness  that  get  the 
local  name  of  dry  lakes.  Where  the  moun- 
tains are  steep  and  the  rains  heavy,  the  pool 
is  never  quite  dry,  but  dark  and  bitter, 
rimmed  about  with  the  efflorescence  of  al- 
kaline deposits.  A  thin  crust  of  it  lies  along 
the  marsh  over  the  vegetating  area,  which 
has  neither  beauty  nor  freshness.  In  the 
broad  wastes  open  to  the  wind  the  sand 
drifts  in  hummocks  about  the  stubby  shrubs, 
and  between  them  the  soil  shows  saline 
4 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

traces.  The  sculpture  of  the  hills  here  is 
more  wind  than  water  work,  though  the 
quick  storms  do  sometimes  scar  them  past 
many  a  year's  redeeming.  In  all  the  West- 
ern desert  edges  there  are  essays  in  min- 
iature at  the  famed,  terrible  Grand  Caiion,  j 
to  which,  if  you  keep  on  long  enough  in 
this  country,  you  will  come  at  last. 

Since  this  is  a  hill  country  one  expects 
to  find  springs,  but  not  to  depend  upon 
them  ;  for  when  found  they  are  often  brack- 
ish and  unwholesome,  or  maddening,  slow 
dribbles  in  a  thirsty  soil.  Here  you  find 
the  hot  sink  of  Death  Valley,  or  high  roll- 
ing districts  where  the  air  has  always  a 
tang  of  frost.  Here  are  the  long  heavy 
winds  and  breathless  calms  on  the  tilted 
mesas  where  dust  devils  dance,  whirling  up 
into  a  wide,  pale  sky.  Here  you  have  no 
rain  when  all  the  earth  cries  for  it,  or  quick 
5 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

downpours  called  cloud-bursts  for  violence. 
A  land  of  lost  rivers,  with  little  in  it  to  love  ; 
yet  a  land  that  once  visited  must  be  come 
back  to  inevitably.  If  it  were  not  so  there 
would  be  little  told  of  it. 

This  is  the  country  of  three  seasoins^ 
From  June  on  to  November  it  lies  hot, 
still,  and  unbearable,  sick  with  violent 
unrelieving  storms;  then  on  until  April, 
chill,  quiescent,  drinking  its  scant  rain  and 
scanter  snows ;  from  April  to  the  hot  season 
again,  blossoming,  radiant,  and  seductive. 
These  months  are  only  approximate ;  later 
or  earlier  the  rain-laden  wind  may  drift  up 
the  water  gate  of  the  Colorado  from  the 
Gulf,  and  the  land  sets  its  seasons  by  the 
rain. 

The  desert  floras  shame  us  with  their 
cheerful  adaptations  to  the  seasonal  limita- 
tions.    Their  whole  duty  is  to  flower  and 
6 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

fruit,  and  they  do  it  hardly,  or  with  tropi- 
cal luxuriance,  as  the  raiii  admits.     It  is 
recorded  in  the  report  of  the  Death  Valley 
expedition  that  after  a  year  of  abundant  , 
rains,  on  the  Colorado  desert  was  found  a  \ 
specimen  of  Amaranthus  ten  feet  high.    A    I 
year  later  the  same  species  in   the  same  / 
place    matured    in    the    drought    at    four  / 
inches.     One   hopes  the  land  may  breed  i 
like  qualities  in  her  human  offspring,  not- 
tritely  to  "  try,"  but  to  do.     Seldom  does 
the  desert  herb  attain  the  full  stature  of 
the   type.     Extreme  aridity  and   extreme 
altitude  have  the  same  dwarfing  effect,  so 
that  we  find   in   the   high  Sierras  and  in 
Death  Valley  related  species  in  miniature 
that  reach  a  comely  growth  in  mean  tem- 
peratures. Very  fertile  are  the  desert  plants 
in  expedients  to  prevent  evaporation,  turn- 
ing their  foliage  edgewise  toward  the  sun, 
7 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

growing  silky  hairs,  exuding  viscid  gum. 
Tlie  wind,  which  has  a  long  sweep,  harries 
and  helps  them.  It  rolls  up  dunes  about 
the  stocky  stems,  encompassing  and  pro- 
tective, and  above  the  dunes,  which  may 
be,  as  with  the  mesquite,  three  times  as 
high  as  a  man,  the  blossoming  twigs  flour- 
ish and  bear  fruit.      < 

There  are  many  areas  in  the  desert 
where  drinkable  water  lies  within  a  few 
feet  of  the  surface,  indicated  by  the  mes- 
quite and  the  bunch  gr2iSs{Sporobol7is  airo- 
ides).  It  is  this  nearness  of  unimagined 
help  that  makes  the  tragedy  of  desert 
deaths.  It  is  related  that  the  final  break- 
down of  that  hapless  party  that  gave  Death 
Valley  its  forbidding  name  occurred  in  a 
locality  where  shallow  wells  would  have 
saved  them.  But  how  were  they  to  know 
that  ?     Properly  equipped  it  is  possible  to 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

go  safely  across  that  ghastly  sink,  yet  every 
year  it  takes  its  toll  of  death,  and  yet  men 
find  there  sun-dried  mummies,  of  whom 
no  trace  or  recollection  is  preserved.  To 
underestimate  one's  thirst,  to  pass  a  given 
landmark  to  the  right  or  left,  to  find  a  dry 
spring  where  one  looked  for  running  water 
—  there  is  no  help  for  any  of  these  things. 
Along  springs  and  sunken  watercourses 
one  is  surprised  to  find  such  water-loving 
plants  as  grow  widely  in  moist  ground,  but 
the  true  desert  breeds  its  own  kind,  each 
in  its  particular  habitat.  The  angle  of  the 
slope,  the  frontage  of  a  hill,  the  structure 
of  the  soil  determines  the  plant.  South- 
looking  hills  are  nearly  bare,  and  the  lower 
tree-line  higher  here  by  a  thousand  feet. 
Cafions  running  east  and  west  will  have 
one  wall  naked  and  one  clothed.  Around 
dry  lakes  and  marshes  the  herbage  pre- 
-   9 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 


serves  a  set  and  orderly  arrangement.    Most 
species  have  well-defined  areas  of  growth, 
the  best  index  the  voiceless  land  can  give 
the  traveler  of  his  whereabouts. 
,     If  you  have  any  doubt  about  it,  know 

/  that  the  desert  begins  with  the  creosote. 

(This  immortal   shrub    spreads   down   into 
J  Death   Valley  and   up   to   the  lower  tim- 

/  ber-line,  odorous  and  medicinal  as  you 
might  guess  from  the  name,  wandlike,  with 
shining  fretted  foliage.  Its  vivid  green  is 
grateful  to  the  eye  in  a  wilderness  of  gray 
and  greenish  white  shrubs.  In  the  spring 
it  exudes  a  resinous  gum  which  the  In- 
dians of  those  parts  know  how  to  use  with 
pulverized  rock  for  cementing  arrow  points 
to  shafts.  Trust  Indians  not  to  miss  any 
virtues  of  the  plant  world  ! 

Nothing  the  desert  produces  expresses 
it  better  than  the  unhappy  growth  of  the 

lO 


THE    LAND    OF   LITTLE    RAIN 


tree  yuccas.  Tormented,  thin  forests  of  it 
stalk  drearily  in  the  high  mesas,  particu- 
larly in  that  triangular  slip  that  fans  out 
eastward  from  the  meeting  of  the  Sierras 
and  coastwise  hills  where  the  first  swings 
across  the  southern  end  of  the  San  Joaquin 
Valley.  Xhe-yuaca  bristles  with  bayonet- 
pointed  leaves,  dull  green,  growing  shaggy 
with  age,  tipped  with  panicles  of  fetid, 
greenish  bloom.  After  death,  which  is 
slow,  the  ghostly  hollow  network  of  its 
woody  skeleton,  with  hardly  power  to  rot, 
makes  the  moonlight  fearful.  Before  the 
yucca  has  come  to  flower,  while  yet  its 
bloom  is  a  creamy  cone-shaped  bud  of  the 
size  of  a  small  cabbage,  full  of  sugary  sap, 
the  Indians  twist  it  deftly  out  of  its  fence 
of  daggers  and  roast  it  for  their  own  delec- 
tation. So  it  is  that  in  those  parts  where 
man  inhabits  one  sees  young  plants  of 
II 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

Yticca  arborensis  infrequently.  Other  yuc- 
cas, cacti,  low  herbs,  a  thousand  sorts,  one 
finds  journeying  east  from  the  coastwise 
hills.  There  is  neither  poverty  of  soil  nor 
species  to  account  for  the  sparseness  of 
desert  growth,  but  simply  that  each  plant 
requires  more  room.  So  much  earth  musit 
be  preempted  to  extract  so  much  moisture. 
The  real  struggle  for  existence,  the  real 
brain  of  the  plant,  is  underground  ;  above 
'  there  is  room  for  a  rounded  perfect  growth. 
In  Death  Valley,  reputed  the  very  core  of 
desolation,  are  nearly  two  hundred  identi- 
fied species. 

Above  the  lower  tree-line,  which  is  also 
the  snow-line,  mapped  out  abruptly  by  the 
sun,  one  finds  spreading  growth  of  pinon, 
juniper,  branched  nearly  to  the  ground,  lilac 
and  sage,  and  scattering  white  pines. 

There   is   no  special   preponderance   of 

12 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

self-fertilized  or  wind-fertilized  plants,  but 
everywhere  the  demand  for  and  evidence 
of  insect  life.  Now  where  there  are  seeds 
and  insects  there  will  be  birds  and  small 
mammals,  and  where  these  are,  will  come 
the  slinking,  sharp-toothed  kind  that  prey 
on  them.  Go  as  far  as  you  dare  in  the 
heart  of  a  lonely  land,  you  cannot  go  so 
far  that  life  and  death  are  not  before  you. 
Painted  lizards  slip  in  and  out  of  rock 
crevices,  and  pant  on  the  white  hot  sands. 
Birds,  hummingbirds  even,  nest  in  the 
cactus  scrub ;  woodpeckers  befriend  the 
demoniac  yuccas  ;  out  of  the  stark,  treeless 
waste  rings  the  music  of  the  night-singing 
mockingbird.  If  it  be  summer  and  the 
sun  well  down,  there  will  be  a  burrowing 
owl  to  call.  Strange,  furry,  tricksy  things 
dart  across  the  open  places,  or  sit  motion- 
less in  the  conning  towers  of  the  creosote. 
13 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

The  poet  may  have  "  named  all  the  birds 
without  a  gun,"  but  not  the  fairy-footed, 
ground-inhabiting,  furtive,  small  folk  of  the 
rainless  regions.  They  are  too  many  and 
too  swift ;  how  many  you  would  not  believe 
without  seeing  the  footprint  tracings  in  the 
sand.  They  are  nearly  all  night  workers, 
finding  the  days  too  hot  and  white.  In 
mid-desert  where  there  are  no  cattle,  there 
are  no  birds  of  carrion,  but  if  you  go  far 
in  that  direction  the  chances  are  that  you 
will  find  yourself  shadowed  by  their  tilted 
wings.  Nothing  so  large  as  a  man  can 
move  unspied  upon  in  that  country,  and 
they  know  well  how  the  land  deals  with 
strangers.  There  are  hints  to  be  had  here 
of  the  way  in  which  a  land  forces  new  hab- 
its on  its  dwellers.  The  quick  increase  of 
suns  at  the  end  of  spring  sometimes  over- 
takes birds  in  their  nesting  and  effects  a 

14. 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 


reversal  of  the  ordinary  manner  of  incuba- 
tion. It  becomes  necessary  to  keep  eggs 
cool  rather  than  warm.  One  hot,  stifling 
spring  in  the  Little  Antelope  I  had  occa- 
sion to  pass  and  repass  frequently  the  nest 
of  a  pair  of  meadowlarks,  located  unhap- 
pily in  the  shelter  of  a  very  slender  weed. 
I  never  caught  them  sitting  except  near 
night,  but  at  midday  they  stood,  or  drooped 
above  it,  half  fainting  with  pitifully  parted 
bills,  between  their  treasure  and  the  sun. 
Sometimes  both  of  them  together  with 
wings  spread  and  half  lifted  continued  a 
spot  of  shade  in  a  temperature  that  con- 
strained me  at  last  in  a  fellow  feeling  to 
spare  them  a  bit  of  canvas  for  permanent 
shelter.  There  was  a  fence  in  that  country 
shutting  in  a  cattle  range,  and  along  its 
fifteen  miles  of  posts  one  could  be  sure 
of  finding  a  bird  or  two  in  every  strip  of 
15 


|i  /  -^ .  ■ ' 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

shadow  ;  sometimes  the  sparrow  and  the 
hawk,  with  wings  trailed  and  beaks  parted, 
drooping  in  the  white  truce  of  noon. 

If  one  is  incHned  to  wonder  at  first  how 
so  many  dwellers  came  to  be  in  the  lone- 
liest land  that  ever  came  out  of  God's 
hands,  what  they  do  there  and  why  stay, 
one  does  not  wonder  so  much  after  having 
lived  there.  None  other  than  this  long 
brown  land  lays  such  a  hold  on  the  affec- 
tions. The  rainbow  hills,  the  tender  blu- 
ish mists,  the  luminous  radiance  of  the 
spring,  have  the  lotus  charm.  They  trick 
the  sense  of  time,  so  that  once  inhabiting 
there  you  always  mean  to  go  away  without 
quite  realizing  that  you  have  not  done  it. 
Men  who  have  lived  there,  miners  and  cat- 
tle-men, will  tell  you  this,  not  so  fluently, 
but  emphatically,  cursing  the  land  and  go- 
ing back  to  it.  For  one  thing  there  is  the 
i6 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

divinest,  cleanest  air  to  be  breathed  any- 
where in  God's  world.  Some  day  the 
world  will  understand  that,  and  the  little 
oases  on  the  windy  tops  of  hills  will  har- 
bor for  healing  its  ailing,  house -weary 
broods.  There  is  promise  there  of  great 
wealth  in  ores  and  earths,  which  is  no 
wealth  by  reason  of  being  so  far  removed 
from  water  and  workable  conditions,  but 
men  are  bewitched  by  it  and  tempted  to 
try  the  impossible. 

You  should  hear  Salty  Williams  tell  how 
he  used  to  drive  eighteen  and  twenty-mule 
teams  from  the  borax  marsh  to  Mojave, 
ninety  miles,  with  the  trail  wagon  full  of 
water  barrels.  Hot  days  the  mules  would 
go  so  mad  for  drink  that  the  clank  of  the 
water  bucket  set  them  into  an  uproar  of 
hideous,  maimed  noises,  and  a  tangle  of 
harness  chains,  while  Salty  would  sit  on 
17 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

the  high  seat  with  the  sun  glare  heavy  in 
his  eyes,  dealing  out  curses  of  pacification 
in  a  level,  uninterested  voice  until  the 
clamor  fell  off  from  sheer  exhaustion. 
There  was  a  line  of  shallow  graves  along 
that  road  ;  they  used  to  count  on  dropping 
a  man  or  two  of  every  new  gang  of  coolies 
brought  out  in  the  hot  season.  But  when 
he  lost  his  swamper,  smitten  without  warn- 
ing at  the  noon  halt,  Salty  quit  his  job ;  he 
said  it  was  "  too  durn  hot."  The  swamper 
he  buried  by  the  way  with  stones  upon  him 
to  keep  the  coyotes  from  digging  him  up, 
and  seven  years  later  I  read  the  penciled 
lines  on  the  pine  headboard,  still  bright 
and  unweathered. 

But    before    that,    driving    up    on    the 

Mojave  stage,  I  met  Salty  again  crossing 

Indian  Wells,  his  face  from  the  high  seat, 

tanned  and  ruddy  as  a  harvest  moon,  loom- 

i8 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

ing  through  the  golden  dust  above  his  eigh- 
teen mules.     The  land  had  called  him. 

The  palpable  sense  of  mystery  in  the 
desert  air  breeds  fables,  chiefly  of  lost  trea- 
sure. Somewhere  within  its  stark  borders, 
if  one  believes  report,  is  a  hill  strewn  with 
nuggets ;  one  seamed  with  virgin  silver ; 
an  old  clayey  water-bed  where  Indians 
scooped  up  earth  to  make  cooking  pots 
and  shaped  them  reeking  with  grains  of 
pure  gold.  Old  miners  drifting  about  the 
desert  edges,  weathered  into  the  semblance 
of  the  tawny  hills,  will  tell  you  tales  like 
these  convincingly.  After  a  little  sojourn 
in  that  land  you  will  believe  them  on  their 
own  account.  It  is  a  question  whether  it 
is  not  better  to  be  bitten  by  the  little  horneci~] 
snake  of  the  desert  that  goes  sidewise  and 
strikes  without  coiling,  than  by  the  tradition 
of  a  lost  mine. 

19 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

And  yet  —  and  yet  —  is  it  not  perhaps 
to  satisfy  expectation  that  one  falls  into  the 
tragic  key  in  writing  of  desertness  ?  The 
more  yoii  wish  of  it  the  more  you  get,  and 
in  the  mean  time  lose  much  of  pleasantness. 
In  that  country  which  begins  at  the  foot  of 
the  east  slope  of  the  Sierras  and  spreads 
out  by  less  and  less  lofty  hill  ranges  toward 
the  Great  Basin,  it  is  possible  to  live  with 
great  zest,  to  have  red  blood  and  delicate 
joys,  to  pass  and  repass  about  one's  daily 
performance  an  area  that  would  make  an 
Atlantic  seaboard  State,  and  that  with  no 
peril,  and,  according  to  our  way  of  thought, 
no  particular  difficulty.  At  any  rate,  it  was 
not  people  who  went  into  the  desert  merely 
to  write  it  up  who  invented  the  fabled 
Hassaympa,  of  whose  waters,  if  any  drink, 
they  can  no  more  see  fact  as  naked  fact, 
but  all  radiant  with  the  color  of  romance. 
20 


THE    LAND    OF    LITTLE    RAIN 

I,  who  must  have  drunk  of  it  in  my  twice 
seven  years'  wanderings,  am  assured  that  it 
is  worth  while. 

For  all  the  toll  the  desert  :takes  of  aman 
it  gives  compensations,  deep  breaths,  deep 
sleep,  and  the  communion  of  the  stars.  It 
comes  upon  one  with  new  force  in  the 
pauses  of  the  night  that  the  Chaldeans 
were  a  desert-bred  people.  It  is  hard  to 
escape  the  sense  of  mastery  as  the  stars 
move  in  the  wide  clear  heavens  to  risings 
and  settings  unobscured.  They  look  large 
and  near  and  palpitant ;  as  if  they  moved 
on  some  stately  service  not  needful  to  de- 
clare. Wheeling  to  their  stations  in  the 
sky,  they  make  the  poor  world-fret  of  no 
account.  Of  no  account  you  who  lie  out 
there  watching,  nor  the  lean  coyote  that 
stands  off  in  the  scrub  from  you  and  howls 
and  howls. 

21 


WATER    TRAILS    OF   THE 
CERISO 


yAr.k.s 


/ 


WATER   TRAILS    OF   THE 
CERISO 

BY  the  end  of  the  dry  season  the  water 
trails  of  the  Ceriso  are  worn  to  a  white 
ribbon  in  the  leaning  grass,  spread  out  faint 
and  fanwise  toward  the  homes  of  gopher 
and  ground  rat  and  squirrel.  But  how- 
ever faint  to  man-sight,  they  are  sufHciently 
plain  to  the  furred  and  feathered  folk  who 
travel  them.  Getting  down  to  the  eye  level 
of  rat  and  squirrel  kind,  one  perceives  what 
might  easily  be  wide  and  winding  roads  to 
us  if  they  occurred  in  thick  plantations  of 
trees  three  times  the  height  of  a  man.  It 
needs  but  a  slender  thread  of  barrenness  to 
make  a  mouse  trail  in  the  forest  of  the  sod. 
To  the  little  people  the  water  trails  are  as 
country  roads,  with  scents  as  signboards. 
25 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

It  seems  that  man-height  is  the  least 
fortunate  of  all  heights  from  which  to  study 
trails.  It  is  better  to  go  up  the  front  of 
some  tall  hill,  say  the  spur  of  Black  Moun- 
tain, looking  back  and  down  across  the 
hollow  of  the  Ceriso.  Strange  how  long 
the  soil  keeps  the  impression  of  any  con- 
tinuous treading,  even  after  grass  has  over- 
grown it.  Twenty  years  since,  a  brief  hey- 
day of  mining  at  Black  Mountain  made  a 
stage  road  across  the  Ceriso,  yet  the  par- 
allel lines  that  are  the  wheel  traces  show 
from  the  height  dark  and  well  defined. 
Afoot  in  the  Ceriso  one  looks  in  vain  for 
any  sign  of  it.  So  all  the  paths  that  wild 
creatures  use  going  down  to  the  Lone  Tree 
Spring  are  mapped  out  whitely  from  this 
level,  which  is  also  the  level  of  the  hawks. 

There  is  little  water  in  the  Ceriso  at  the 
best  of  times,  and  that  little  brackish  and 
26 


WATER    TRAILS    OF   THE    CERISO 

smelling  vilely,  but  by  a  lone  juniper  where 
the  rim  of  the  Ceriso  breaks  away  to  the 
lower  country,  there  is  a  perpetual  rill  of 
fresh  sweet  drink  in  the  midst  of  lush  grass 
and  watercress.  In  the  dry  season  there 
is  no  water  else  for  a  man  s  long  journey 
of  a  day. ""  East  to  the  foot  of  Black  Moun- 
tain, and  north  and  south  without  count- 
ing, are  the  burrows  of  small  rodents,  rat 
and  squirrel  kind.  Under  the  sage  are 
the  shallow  forms  of  the  jackrabbits,  and  in 
the  dry  banks  of  washes,  and  among  the 
strewn  fragments  of  black  rock,  lairs  of 
bobcat,  fox,  and  coyote. 

The  coyote  is  your  true  water-witch,  one 
who  snuffs  and  paws,  snuffs  and  paws 
again  at  the  smallest  spot  of  moisture- 
scented  earth  until  he  has  freed  the  blind 
water  from  the  soil.  Many  water -holes 
are  no  more  than  this  detected  by  the  lean 
27 


/ 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

hobo  of  the  hills  in  localities  where  not 
even  an  Indian  would  look  for  it. 

It  is  the  opinion  of  many  wise  and  busy 
people  that  the  hill-folk  pass  the  ten-month 
interval  between  the  end  and  renewal  of 
winter  rains,  with  no  drink ;  but  your  true 
idler,  with  days  and  nights  to  spend  beside 
the  water  trails,  will  not  subscribe  to  it. 
The  trails  begin,  as  I  said,  very  far  back  in 
the  Ceriso,  faintly,  and  converge  in  one 
span  broad,  white,  hard-trodden  way  in  the 
gully  of  the  spring.  And  why  trails  if 
there  are  no  travelers  in  that  direction  ? 

I  have  yet  to  find  the  land  not  scarred 
by  the  thin,  far  roadways  of  rabbits  and 
what  not  of  furry  folks  that  run  in  them. 
Venture  to  look  for  some  seldom-touched 
water-hole,  and  so  long  as  the  trails  run 
with  your  general  direction  make  sure  you 
are  right,  but  if  they  begin  to  cross  yours 
28 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

at  iever  so  slight  an  angle,  to  converge 
toward  a  point  left  or  right  of  your  objec- 
tive, no  matter  what  the  maps  say,  or  your 
memory,  trust  them  ;  they  know. 

It  is  very  still  in  the  Ceriso  by  day,  so 
that  were  it  not  for  the  evidence  of  those 
white  beaten  ways,  it  might  be  the  desert 
it  looks.  The  sun  is  hot  in  the  dry  season, 
and  the  days  are  filled  with  the  glare  of  it. 
Now  and  again  some  unseen  coyote  signals 
his  pack  in  a  long-drawn,  dolorous  whine 
that  comes  from  no  determinate  point,  but 
nothing  stirs  much  before  mid-afternoon. 
It  is  a  sign  when  there  begin  to  be  hawks 
skimming  above  the  sage  that  the  little 
people  are  going  about  their  business. 

We  have  fallen  on  a  very  careless  usage, 

speaking  of  wild  creatures  as  if  they  were 

bound  b^^  some  such  limitation  as  hampers 

clockwork.     When  we  say  of  one  and  an- 

29 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

Other,  they  are  night  prowlers,  it  is  perhaps 
true  only  as  the  things  they  feed  upon  are 
more  easily  come  by  in  the  dark,  and  they 
know  well  how  to  adjust  themselves  to  con- 
ditions wherein  food  is  more  plentiful  by 
day.  And  their  accustomed  performance 
is  very  much  a  matter  of  keen  eye,  keener 
scent,  quick  ear,  and  a  better  memory  of 
sights  and  sounds  than  man  dares  boast. 
Watch  a  coyote  come  out  of  his  lair  and 
,  cast  about  in  his  mind  where  he  will  go 
for  his  daily  killing.  You  cannot  very  well 
tell  what  decides  him,  but  very  easily  that 
he  has  decided.  He  trots  or  breaks  into 
short  gallops,  with  very  perceptible  pauses 
to  look  up  and  about  at  landmarks,  alters 
his  tack  a  little,  looking  forward  and  back 
to  steer  his  proper  course.  I  am  persuaded 
that  the  coyotes  in  my  valley,  which  Tsliar- 
row  and  beset  with  steep,  sharp  hills,  in 
30 


WATER    TRAILS    OF   THE    CERISO 

long  passages  steer  by  the  pinnacles  of  the 
sky-line,  going  with  head  cocked  to  one 
side  to  keep  to  the  left  or  right  of  such  and 
such  a  promontory. 

I  have  trailed  a  coyote  often,  going  across 
country,  perhaps  to  where  some  slant- 
winged  scavenger  hanging  in  the  air  sig- 
naled prospect  of  a  dinner,  and  found  his 
track  such  as  a  man,  a  very  intelligent  man 
accustomed  to  a  hill  country,  and  a  little 
cautious,  would  make  to  the  same  point. 
Here  a  detour  to  avoid  a  stretch  of  too 
little  cover,  there  a  pause  on  the  rim  of  a 
gully  to  pick  the  better  way,  — and  it  is  usu- 
ally the  best  way,  —  and  making  his  point 
with  the  greatest  economy  of  effort.  Since 
the  time  of  Seyavi  the  deer  have  shifted 
their  feeding  ground  across  the  valley  at 
the  beginning  of  deep  snows,  by  way  of  the 
Black  Rock,  fording  the  river  at  Charley's 
31 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

Butte,  and  making  straight  for  the  mouth 
of  the  canon  that  is  the  easiest  going  to  the 
winter  pastures  on  Waban.  So  they  still 
cross,  though  whatever  trail  they  had  has 
been  long  broken  by  ploughed  ground  ;  but 
from  the  mouth  of  Tinpah  Creek,  where'the 
deer  come  out  of  the  Sierras,  it  is  easily  seen 
that  the  creek,  the  point  of  Black  Rock, 
and  Charley's  Butte  are  in  line  with  the 
wide  bulk  of  shade  that  is  the  foot  of  Wa- 
ban Pass.  And  along  with  this  the  deer 
have  learned  that  Charley's  Butte  is  almost 
the  only  possible  ford,  and  all  the  shortest 
crossing  of  the  valley.  It  seems  that  the 
wild  creatures  have  learned  all  that  is  im- 
portant to  their  way  of  life  except  the 
changes  of  the  moon.  I  have  seen  some 
prowling  fox  or  coyote,  surprised  by  its 
sudden  rising  from  behind  the  mountain 
wall,  slink  in  its  increasing  glow,  watch  it 
32 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

furtively  from  the  cover  of  near-by  brush, 
unprepared  and  half  uncertain  of  its  identity 
until  it  rode  clear  of  the  peaks,  and  finally 
make  off  with  all  the  air  of  one  caught  nap- 
ping by  an  ancient  joke.  The  moon  in  its  -/§ 
wanderings  must  be  a  sort  of  exasperation 
to  cunning  beasts,  likely  to  spoil  by  un- 
timely risings  some  fore-planned  mischief. 
But  to  take  the  trail  again ;  the  coyotes 
that  are  astir  in  the  Ceriso  of  late  after- 
noons, harrying  the  rabbits  from  their 
shallow  forms,  and  the  hawks  that  sweep 
and  swing  above  them,  are  not  there  from 
any  mechanical  promptings  of  instinct, 
but  because  they  know  of  old  experience 
that  the  small  fry  are  about  to  take  to  seed 
gathering  and  the  water  trails.  The  rabbits 
begin  it,  taking  the  trail  with  long,  light 
leaps,  one  eye  and  ear  cocked  to  the  hills 
from  whence  a  coyote  might  descend  upon 
33 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

/them  at  any  moment.  Rabbits  are  a  fool- 
ish people.  They  do  not  fight  except  with 
their  own  kind,  nor  use  their  paws  except 
for  feet,  and  appear  to  have  no  reason  for 

.existence  but  to  furnish  meals  for  meat- 
eaters.  In  flight  they  seem  to  rebound  from 
the  earth  of  their  own  elasticity,  but  keep 
a  sober  pace  going  to  the  spring.  It  is  the 
young  watercress  that  tempts  them  and  the 
pleasures  of  society,  for  they  seldom  drink. 
Even  in  localities  where  there  are  flowing 
streams  they  seem  to  prefer  the  moisture 
that  collects  on  herbage,  and  after  rains 
may  be  seen  rising  on  their  haunches  to 
drink  delicately  the  clear  drops  caught  in 
the  tops  of  the  young  sage.  But  drink 
they  must,  as  I  have  often  seen  them  morn- 
ings and  evenings  at  the  rill  that  goes  by 
my  door.  Wait  long  enough  at  the  Lone 
Tree  Spring  and  sooner  or  later  they  will 
34 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

all  come  in.  But  here  their  matings  are 
accomplished,  and  though  they  are  fearful 
of  so  little  as  a  cloud  shadow  or  blown  leaf,  i 
they  contrive  to  have  some  playful  hours. 
At  the  spring  the  bobcat  drops  down  upon 
them  from  the  black  rock,  and  the  red  fox 
picks  them  up  returning  in  the  dark.  By 
day  the  hawk  and  eagle  overshadow  them, 
and  the  coyote  has  all  times  and  seasons 
for  his  own. 

Cattle,  when  there  are  any  in  the  Ceriso, 
drink  morning  and  evening,  spending  the 
night  on  the  warm  last  lighted  slopes  of 
neighboring  hills,  stirring  with  the  peep  o' 
day.  In  these  half  wild  spotted  steers  the 
habits  of  an  earlier  lineage  persist.  It  must 
be  long  since  they  have  made  beds  for  them- 
selves, but  before  lying  down  they  turn 
themselves  round  and  round  as  dogs  do. 
They  choose  bare  and  stony  ground,  ex- 
35 


WATER    TRAILS    OF   THE    CERISO 

posed  fronts  of  westward  facing  hills,  and 
lie  down  in  companies.  Usually  by  the  end 
of  the  summer  the  cattle  have  been  driven 
or  gone  of  their  own  choosing  to  the  moun- 
tain meadows.  One  year  a  maverick  year- 
ling, strayed  or  overlooked  by  the  vaqueros, 
kept  on  until  the  season's  end,  and  so  be- 
trayed another  visitor  to  the  spring  that 
else  I  might  have  missed.  On  a  certain 
morning  the  half-eaten  carcass  lay  at  the 
foot  of  the  black  rock,  and  in  moist  earth 
by  the  rill  of  the  spring,  the  foot-pads  of  a 
cougar,  puma,  mountain  lion,  or  whatever 
the  beast  is  .rightly  called.  The  kill  must 
have  been  made  early  in  the  evening,  for  it 
appeared  that  the  cougar  had  been  twice  to 
the  spring ;  and  since  the  meat-eater  drinks 
little  until  he  has  eaten,  he  must  have  fed 
and  drunk,  and  after  an  interval  of  lying 
up  in  the  black  rock,  had  eaten  and  drunk 
36 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 


again.  There  was  no  knowing  how  far  he 
had  come,  but  if  he  came  again  the  second 
night  he  found  that  the  coyotes  had  left  him 
very  Httle  of  his  kill. 

Nobody  ventures  to  say  how  infrequently 
and  at  what  hour  the  small  fry  visit  the 
spring.  There  are  such  numbers  of  them 
that  if  each  came  once  between  the  last  of 
spring  and  the  first  of  winter  rains,  there 
would  still  be  water  trails.  I  have  seen 
badgers  drinking  about  the  hour  when  the 
light  takes  on  the  yellow  tinge  it  has  from 
coming  slantwise  through  the  hills.  They 
find  out  shallow  places,  and  are  loath  to  wet 
their  feet.  Rats  and  chipmunks  have  been 
observed  visiting  the  spring  as  late  as  nine 
o'clock  mornings.  The  larger  spermophiles 
that  live  near  the  spring  and  keep  awake  to 
work  all  day,  come  and  go  at  no  particular 
hour,  drinking  sparingly.  At  long  inter- 
37 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 


vals  on  half-lighted  days,  meadow  and  field 
mice  steal  delicately  along  the  trail.  These 
visitors  are  all  too  small  to  be  watched 
carefully  at  night,  but  for  evidence  of  their 
frequent  coming  there  are  the  trails  that 
may  be  traced  miles  out  among  the  crisp- 
ing grasses.  On  rare  nights,  in  the  places 
where  no  grass  grows  between  the  shrubs, 
and  the  sand  silvers  whitely  to  the  moon, 
one  sees  them  whisking  to  and  fro  on  in- 
numerable errands  of  seed  gathering,  but 
the  chief  witnesses  of  their  presence  near 
the  spring  are  the  elf  owls.  Those  bur- 
row-haunting, speckled  fluffs  of  greediness 
begin  a  twilight  flitting  toward  the  spring, 
feeding  as  they  go  on  grasshoppers,  lizards, 
and  small,  swift  creatures,  diving  into  bur- 
rows to  catch  field  mice  asleep,  battling 
with  chipmunks  at  their  own  doors,  and 
getting  down  in  great  numbers  toward  the 
38 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

lone  juniper.  Now  owls  do  not  love  water 
greatly  on  its  own  account.  Not  to  my 
knowledge  have  I  caught  one  drinking  or 
bathing,  though  on  night  wanderings  across 
the  mesa  they  flit  up  from  under  the  horse's 
feet  along  stream  borders.  Their  presence 
near  the  spring  in  great  numbers  would 
indicate  the  presence  of  the  things  they 
feed  upon.  All  night  the  rustle  and  soft 
hooting  keeps  on  in  the  neighborhood  of 
the  spring,  with  seldom  small  shrieks  of 
mortal  agony.  It  is  clear  day  before  they 
have  all  gotten  back  to  their  particular 
hummocks,  and  if  one  follows  cautiously, 
not  to  frighten  them  into  some  near-by 
burrow,  it  is  possible  to  trail  them  far  up 
the  slope. 

The    crested    quail    that   troop    in    the 
Ceriso  are  the  happiest  frequenters  of  the 
water  trails.    There  is  no  furtiveness  about 
39 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

their  morning  drink.  About  the  time  the 
burrowers  and  all  that  feed  upon  them  are 
addressing  themselves  to  sleep,  great  flocks 
pour  down  the  trails  with  that  peculiar 
melting  motion  of  moving  quail,  twitter- 
ing, shoving,  and  shouldering.  They  splat- 
ter into  the  shallows,  drink  daintily,  shake 
out  small  showers  over  their  perfect  coats, 
and  melt  away  again  into  the  scrub,  preen- 
ing and  pranking,  with  soft  contented 
noises. 

After  the  quail,  sparrows  and  ground- 
inhabiting  birds  bathe  with  the  utmost 
frankness  and  a  great  deal  of  splutter;  and 
here  in  the  heart  of  noon  hawks  resort,  sit- 
ting panting,  with  wings  aslant,  and  a  truce 
to  all  hostilities  because  of  the  heat.  One 
summer  there  came  a  road-runner  up  from 
the  lower  valley,  peeking  and  prying,  and 
he  had  never  any  patience  with  the  water 
40 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

baths  of  the  sparrows.  His  own  ablutions 
were  performed  in  the  clean,  hopeful  dust 
of  the  chaparral ;  and  whenever  he  hap- 
pened on  their  morning  splatterings,  he 
would  depress  his  glossy  crest,  slant  his 
shining  tail  to  the  level  of  his  body,  until 
he  looked  most  like  some  bright  venomous 
snake,  daunting  them  with  shrill  abuse  and 
feint  of  battle.  Then  suddenly  he  would 
go  tilting  and  balancing  down  the  gully  in 
fine  disdain,  only  to  return  in  a  day  or  two 
to  make  sure  the  foolish  bodies  were  still 
at  it. 

Out  on  the  Ceriso  about  five  miles,  and 
wholly  out  of  sight  of  it,  near  where  the 
immemorial  foot  trail  goes  up  from  Saline 
Flat  toward  Black  Mountain,  js  ^  wate.L 
sio^n  worth  turninsf  out  of  the  trail  to  see. 
Jt,  is  a  laid  circle  of  stones  large  enough 
not  to  be  disturbed  by  any  ordinary  hap, 
^  ^T — 


WATER    TRAILS    OF   THE    CERISO 

with  an  opening  flanked  by  two  parallel 
rows  of  similar  stones,  between  which  were 

Fig.  I. 

an  arrow  placed,  touching  the  opposite  rim 
of  the  circle,  thus  (Fig.  i),  it  would  point 
as  the  crow  flies  to  the  spring.  It  is  the 
old,  indubitable  water  mark  of  the  Sho- 
shones.  One  still  finds  it  in  the  desert 
ranges  in  Salt  Wells  and  Mesquite  valleys, 
and  along  the  slopes  of  Waban.  On  the 
other  side  of  Ceriso,  where  the  black  rock 
begins,  about  a  mile  from  the  spring,  is  the 
work  of  an  older,  forgotten  people.  The 
rock  hereabout  is  all  volcanic,  fracturing 
with  a  crystalline  whitish  surface,  but  weath- 
42 


WATER    TRAILS    OF    THE    CERISO 

ered  outside  to  furnace  blackness.  Around 
the  spring,  where  must  have  been  a  gath- 
ering place  of  the  tribes,  it  is  scored  over 
with  strange  pictures  and  symbols  that 
have  no  meaning  to  the  Indians  of  the  pre- 
sent day ;  but  out  where  the  rock  begins, 
there  is  carved  into  the  white  heart  of  it  a 


Fig.  2. 

pointing  arrow  over  the  symbol  for  dis- 
tance and  a  circle  full  of  wavy  lines  (Fig. 
2)  reading  thus :  "  In  this  direction  three 
[units  of  measurement  unknown]  is  a 
spring  of  sweet  water ;  look  for  it." 
43 


THE   SCAVENGERS 


\ 


_-,^il4if^': 


n 


THE   SCAVENGERS 

FIFTY-SEVEN  buzzards,  one  on  each 
of  fifty-seven  fence  posts  at  the  rancho 
El  Tejon,  on  a  mirage-breeding  September 
morning,  sat  solemnly  while  the  white 
tilted  travelers'  vans  lumbered  down  the 
Canada  de  los  Uvas.  After  three  hours 
they  had  only  clapped  their  wings,  or  ex- 
changed posts.  The  season's  end  in  the 
vast  dim  valley  of  the  San  Joaquin  is  pal- 
pitatingly hot,  and  the  air  breathes  like 
cotton  wool.  Through  it  all  the  buzzards 
sit  on  the  fences  and  low  hummocks,  with 
wings  spead  fanwise  for  air.  There  is  no 
end  to  them,  and  they  smell  to  heaven. 
Their  heads  droop,  and  all  their  communi- 
cation is  a  rare,  horrid  croak. 

The  increase  of  wild  creatures  is  in  pro- 
47 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

portion  to  the  things  they  feed  upon :  the 
more  carrion  the  more  buzzards.  The  end 
of  the  third  successive  dry  year  bred  them 
beyond  belief.  The  first  year  quail  mated 
sparingly ;  the  second  year  the  wild  oats 
matured  no  seed ;  the  third,  cattle  died  in 
their  tracks  with  their  heads  towards  the 
stopped  watercourses.  And  that  year  the 
scavengers  were  as  black  as  the  plague  all 
across  the  mesa  and  up  the  treeless,  tumbled 
hills.  On  clear  days  they  betook  them- 
selves to  the  upper  air,  where  they  hung 
motionless  for  hours.  That  year  there 
were  vultures  among  them,  distinguished 
by  the  white  patches  under  the  wings.  All 
their  offensiveness  notwithstanding,  they 
have  a  stately  flight.  They  must  also  have 
what  pass  for  good  qualities  among  them- 
selves, for  they  are  social,  not  to  say  clan- 
nish. 

48 


THE    SCAVENGERS 


It  is  a  very  squalid  tragedy,  —  that  of 
the  dying  brutes  and  the  scavenger  birds. 
Death  by  starvation  is  slow.  The  heavy- 
headed,  rack-boned  cattle  totter  in  the  fruit- 
less trails ;  they  stand  for  long,  patient 
intervals  ;  they  lie  down  and  do  not  rise- 
There  is  fear  in  their  eyes  when  they  are 
first  stricken,  but  afterward  only  intol- 
erable weariness.  I  suppose  the  dumb 
creatures  know  nearly  as  much  of  death 
as  do  their  betters,  who  have  only  the  more 
imagination.  Their  even-breathing  sub- 
mission after  the  first  agony  is  their  trib- 
ute to  its  inevitableness.  It  needs  a  nice 
discrimination  to  say  which  of  the  basket- 
ribbed  cattle  is  likest  to  afford  the  next 
meal,  but  the  scavengers  make  few  mis- 
takes. One  stoops  to  the  quarry  and  the 
flock  follows. 

Cattle  once  down  may  be  days  in  dying. 
49 


^V^ 


y^^ 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

They  stretch   out  their   necks    along    the 
ground,  and  roll  up  their  slow  eyes  at  longer 
intervals.    The  buzzards  have  all  the  time, 
and  no  beak  is  dropped  or  talon  struck  un- 
til the  breath  is  wholly  passed.    It  is  doubt- 
less  the  economy  of   nature  to  have  the 
scavengers  by  to  clean  up  the  carrion,  but 
a  wolf  at  the  throat  would   be   a  shorter 
agony  than  the  long  stalking  and  sometime 
perchings    of    these    loathsome    watchers. 
Suppose  now  it  were  a  man  in  this  long- 
drawn,    hungrily     spied     upon     distress  ! 
/  When  Timmie  O'Shea  was  lost  on  Armo- 
'.     gossa  Flats  for  three  days  without  water, 
,  Long  Tom  Basset  found  him,  not  by  any 
I  trail,  but  by  making  straight  away  for  the 
\  points  where   he  saw  buzzards    stooping. 
He   could   hear  the  beat  of   their  wings, 
Tom  said,  and  trod  on  their  shadows,  but 
O'Shea  was  past  recalling  what  he  thought 
50 


""•i^^,  -'       ""l!3Pi>W^ 


!S5?5jjg-5 


LOST  FOR  THREE  DAYS  IN  THE  DESERT 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

about  things  after  the  second  day.  My 
friend  Ewan  told  me,  among  other  things, 
when  he  came  back  from  San  Juan  Hill, 
that  not  all  the  carnage  of  battle  turned 
his  bowels  as  the  sight  of  slant  black  wings 
rising  flockwise  before  the  burial  squad. 
There  are  three  kinds  of  noises  buzzards 


make,  —  it  is  impossible  to  call  them  notes, 
—  raucous  and  elemental.  There  is  a  short 
,  croak  of  alarm,  and  the  same  syllable  in  a 
modified  tone  to  serve  all  the  purposes  of 
ordinary  conversation.  The  old  birds  make 
a  kind  of  throaty  chuckling  to  their  young, 
but  if  they  have  any  love  song  I  have  not 
heard  it.  The  young  yawp  in  the  nest  a 
little,  with  more  breath  than  noise.  It  is 
seldom  one  finds  a  buzzard's  nest,  seldom 
that  grown-ups  find  a  nest  of  any  sort ;  it 
is  only  children  to  whom  these  things  hap- 
pen by  right.  But  by  making  a  business 
51 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

of  it  one  may  come  upon  them  in  wi-de, 
quiet  cafions,  or  on  the  lookouts  of  lonely, 
table-topped  mountains,  three  or  four  to- 
gether, in  the  tops  of  stubby  trees  or  on 
rotten  cliffs  well  open  to  the  sky. 

It  is  probable  that  the  buzzard  is  grega- 
rious, but  it  seems  unlikely  from  the  small 
number  of  young  noted  at  any  time  that 
every  female  incubates  each  year.  The 
young  birds  are  easily  distinguished  by 
their  size  when  feeding,  and  high  up  in  air 
by  the  worn  primaries  of  the  older  birds. 
It  is  when  the  young  go  out  of  the  nest 
on  their  first  foraging  that  the  parents, 
full  of  a  crass  and  simple  pride,  make  their 
indescribable  chucklings  of  gobbling,  glut- 
tonous delight.  The  little  ones  would  be 
amusing  as  they  tug  and  tussle,  if  one 
could  forget  what  it  is  they  feed  upon. 

One  never  comes  any  nearer  to  the  vul- 
52 


THE    SCAVENGERS 


ture's  nest  or  nestlings  than  hearsay.  They 
keep  to  the  southerly  Sierras,  and  are  bold 
enough,  it  seems,  to  do  killing  on  their  own 
account  when  no  carrion  is  at  hand.  They 
dog  the  shepherd  from  camp  to  camp,  the 
hunter  home  from  the  hill,  and  will  even 
carry  away  offal  from  under  his  hand. 

The  vulture  merits  respect  for  his  big- 
ness and  for  his  bandit  airs,  but  he  is  a 
sombre  bird,  with  none  of  the  buzzard's 
frank  satisfaction  in  his  offensiveness. 

The  least  objectionable  of  the  inland 
scavengers  is  the  raven,  frequenter  of  the 
desert  ranges,  the  same  called  locally  *'  car- 
rion crow."  He  is  handsomer  and  has  such 
an  air.  He  is  nice  in  his  habits  and  is 
said  to  have  likable  traits.  A  tame  one  in 
a  Shoshone  camp  was  the  butt  of  much 
sport  and  enjoyed  it.  He  could  all  but 
talk  and  was  another  with  the  children, 
53 


/*=y^ 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

but  an  arrant  thief.  The  raven  will  eat 
most  things  that  come  his  way,  —  eggs  and 
young  of  ground-nesting  birds,  seeds  even, 
lizards  and  grasshoppers,  which  he  catches 
cleverly;  and  whatever  he  is  about,  let  a 
coyote  trot  never  so  softly  by,  the  raven 
flaps  up  and  after;  for  whatever  the  coyote 
can  pull  down  or  nose  out  is  meat  also 
for  the  carrion  crow. 

And  never  a  coyote  comes  out  of  his 
lair  for  killing,  in  the  country  of  the  car- 
rion crows,  but  looks  up  first  to  see  where 
they  may  be  gathering.  It  is  a  sufficient 
occupation  for  a  windy  morning,  on  the 
lineless,  level  mesa,  to  watch  the  pair  of 
them  eying  each  other  furtively,  with  a 
tolerable  assumption  of  unconcern,  but  no 
doubt  with  a  certain  amount  of  good  un- 
derstanding about  it.  Once  at  Red  Rock, 
in  a  year  of  green  pasture,  which  is  a  bad 
54 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

time  for  the  scavengers,  we  saw  two  buz- 
zards, five  ravens,  and  a  coyote  feeding 
on  the  same  carrion,  and  only  the  coyote 
seemed  ashamed  of  the  company. 

Probably  we  never  fully  credit  the  inter- 
dependence of  wild  creatures,  and  their 
cognizance  of  the  affairs  of  their  own  kind. 
When  the  five  coyotes  that  range  the  Te- 
jon  from  Pasteria  to  Tunawai  planned  a 
relay  race  to  bring  down  an  antelope 
strayed  from  the  band,  beside  myself  to 
watch,  an  eagle  swung  down  from  Mt. 
Pinos,  buzzards,  materialized  out  of  invis- 
ible ether,  and  hawks  came  trooping  like 
small  boys  to  a  street  fight.  Rabbits  sat 
up  in  the  chaparral  and  cocked  their  ears, 
feeling  themselves  quite  safe  for  the  once 
as  the  hunt  swunor  near  them.  Nothina: 
happens  in  the  deep  wood  that  the  blue 
jays  are  not  all  agog  to  tell.  The  hawk 
55 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

follows  the  badger,  the  coyote  the  carrion 
crow,  and  from  their  aerial  stations  the 
buzzards  watch  each  other.  What  would 
be  worth  knowing  is  how  much  of  their 
neighbor's  affairs  the  new  generations 
learn  for  themselves,  and  how  much  they 
are  taught  of  their  elders. 

So  wide  is  the  range  of  the  scavengers 
that  it  is  never  safe  to  say,  eyewitness  to 
the  contrary,  that  there  are  few  or  many  in 
such  a  place.  Where  the  carrion  is,  there 
will  the  buzzards  be  gathered  together,  and 
in  three  days'  journey  you  will  not  sight 
another  one.  The  way  up  from  Mojave  to 
Red  Butte  is  all  desertness,  affording  no 
pasture  and  scarcely  a  rill  of  water.  In  a 
year  of  little  rain  in  the  south,  flocks  and 
herds  were  driven  to  the  number  of  thou- 
sands along  this  road  to  the  perennial  pas- 
tures of  the  high  ranges.  It  is  a  long,  slow 
56 


1 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

trail,  ankle  deep  in  bitter  dust  that  gets 
up  in  the  slow  wind  and  moves  along  the 
backs  of  the  crawling  cattle.  In  the  worst 
of  times  one  in  three  will  pine  and  fall  out 
by  the  way.  In  the  defiles  of  Red  Rock, 
the  sheep  piled  up  a  stinking  lane  ;  it  was 
the  sun  smiting  by  day.  To  these  sham- 
bles came  buzzards,  vultures,  and  coyotes 
from  all  the  country  round,  so  that  on  the 
Tejon,  the  Ceriso,  and  the  Little  Antelope 
there  were  not  scavengers  enough  to  keep 
the  country  clean.  All  that  summer  the 
dead  mummified  in  the  open  or  dropped 
slowly  back  to  earth  in  the  quagmires  of 
the  bitter  springs.  Meanwhile  from  Red 
Rock  to  Coyote  Holes,  and  from  Coyote 
Holes  to  Haiwai  the  scavengers  gorged 
and  gorged. 

The  coyote  is  not  a  scavenger  by  choice, 
preferring  his  own  kill,  but  being  on  the 
57 


THE 'SCAVENGERS 

whole  a  lazy  dog,  is  apt  to  fall  into  carrion 
eatins:  because  it  is  easier.  The  red  fox 
and  bobcat,  a  little  pressed  by  hunger,  will 
eat  of  any  other  animal's  kill,  but  will  not 
ordinarily  touch  what  dies  of  itself,  and  are 
exceedingly  shy  of  food  that  has  been  man- 
handled. 

Very  clean  and  handsome,  quite  bely- 
ing his  relationship  in  appearance,  is 
Clark's  crow,  that  scavenger  and  plunderer 
of  mountain  camps.  It  is  permissible  to 
call  him  by  his  common  name,  "  Camp 
Robber :  "  he  has  earned  it.  Not  content 
with  refuse,  he  pecks  open  meal  sacks, 
filches  whole  potatoes,  is  a  gormand  for 
bacon,  drills  holes  in  packing  cases,  and  is 
daunted  by  nothing  short  of  tin.  All  the 
while  he  does  not  neglect  to  vituperate 
the  chipmunks  and  sparrows  that  whisk 
ofi  crumbs  of  comfort  from  under  the 
58 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

camper's  feet.  The  Camp  Robber's  gray 
coat,  black  and  white  barred  wings,  and 
slender  bill,  with  certain  tricks  of  perching, 
accuse  him  of  attempts  to  pass  himself  off 
among  woodpeckers ;  but  his  behavior  is 
all  crow.  He  frequents  the  higher  pine 
belts,  and  has  a  noisy  strident  call  like  a 
jay's,  and  how  clean  he  and  the  frisk-tailed 
chipmunks  keep  the  camp!  No  crumb  or 
paring  or  bit  of  eggshell  goes  amiss. 

High  as  the  camp  may  be,  so  it  is  not 
above  timber-line,  it  is  not  too  high  for 
the  coyote,  the  bobcat,  or  the  wolf.  It  is 
the  complaint  of  the  ordinary  camper  that 
the  woods  are  too  still,  depleted  of  wild 
life.  But  what  dead  body  of  wild  thing,  or 
neglected  game  untouched  by  its  kind,  do 
you  find  .'*  And  put  out  offal  away  from 
camp  over  night,  and  look  next  day  at  the 
foot  tracks  where  it  lay. 
59 


THE    SCAVENGERS 

Man  is  a  great  blunderer  going  about 
in  the  woods,  and  there  is  no  other  except 
the  bear  makes  so  much  noise.  Being  so 
well  warned  beforehand,  it  is  a  very  stupid 
animal,  or  a  very  bold  one,  that  cannot 
keep  safely  hid.  The  cunningest  hunter  is 
hunted  in  turn,  and  what  he  leaves  of  his 
kill  is  meat  for  some  other.  That  is  the 
economy  of  nature,  but  with  it  all  there  is 
not  sufficient  account  taken  of  the  works 
of  man.  There  is  no  scavenger  that  eats 
tin  cans,  and  no  wild  thing  leaves  a  like 
disfigurement  on  the  forest  floor. 


THE   POCKET    HUNTER 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

I  REMEMBER  very  well  when  I  first 
met  him.  Walking  in  the  evening  glow 
to  spy  the  marriages  of  the  white  gilias,  I 
sniffed  the  unmistakable  odor  of  burning 
saoe.  It  is  a  smell  that  carries  far  and  indi- 
cates  usually  the  nearness  of  a  campoodie, 
but  on  the  level  mesa  nothing  taller  showed 
than  Diana's  sage.  Over  the  tops  of  it,  be- 
ginning to  dusk  under  a  young  white  moon, 
trailed  a  wavering  ghost  of  smoke,  and  at 
the  end  of  it  I  came  upon  the  Pocket 
Hunter  making  a  dry  camp  in  the  friendly 
scrub.  He  sat  tailorwise  in  the  sand,  with 
his  coffee-pot  on  the  coals,  his  supper  ready 
to  hand  in  the  frying  pan,  and  himself  in  a 
mood  for  talk.  His  pack  burros  in  hobbles 
strayed  off  to  hunt  for  a  wetter  mouthful 
63 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

than  the  sage  afforded,  and  gave  him  no 
concern. 

We  came  upon  him  often  after  that, 
threading  the  windy  passes,  or  by  water- 
holes  in  the  desert  hills,  and  got  to  know 
much  of  his  way  of  life.  He  was  a  small, 
bowed  man,  with  a  face  and  manner  and 
speech  of  no  character  at  all,  as  if  he  had 
that  faculty  of  small  hunted  things  of  tak- 
ing on  the  protective  color  of  his  surround- 
ings. His  clothes  were  of  no  fashion  that 
I  could  remember,  except  that  they  bore 
liberal  markings  of  pot  black,  and  he  had 
a  curious  fashion  of  going  about  with  his 
mouth  open,  which  gave  him  a  vacant  look 
until  you  came  near  enough  to  perceive 
him  busy  about  an  endless  hummed,  word- 
less tune.  He  traveled  far  and  took  a  long 
time  to  it,  but  the  simplicity  of  his  kitchen 
arrangements  was  elemental.  A  pot  for 
■6a 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 


beans,  a  coffee-pot,  a  frying-pan,  a  tin  to/ 
mix  bread  in  —  he  fed  the  burros  in  this  ^ 
when  there  was  need  —  with  these  he  had 
been  half  round  our  western  world  and 
back.  He  explained  to  me  very  early  in  our 
acquaintance  what  was  good  to  take  to 
the  hills  for  food :  nothing  sticky,  for  that 
"dirtied  the  pots  ;  "  nothing  with  "juice  " 
to  it,  for  that  would  not  pack  to  advantage  ; 
and  nothing  likely  to  ferment.  He  used  no 
gun,  but  he  would  set  snares  by  the  water- 
holes  for  quail  and  doves,  and  in  the  trout 
country  he  carried  a  line.  Burros  he  kept, 
one  or  two  according  to  his  pack,  for  this 
chief  excellence,  that  they  would  eat  potato 
parings  and  firewood.  He  had  owned  a 
horse  in  the  foothill  country,  but  when  he 
came  to  the  desert  with  no  forage  but  mes- 
quite,  he  found  himself  under  the  neces- 
sity of  picking  the  beans  from  the  briers, 
65 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

a  labor  that  drove  him  to  the  use  of  pack 
animals  to  whom  thorns  were  a  relish. 

I  suppose  no  man  becomes  a  pocket 
hunter  by  first  intention.  He  must  be  born 
with  the  facul,ty,  and  along  comes  the  occa- 
sion, like  the  tap  on  the  test  tube  that- in- 
duces crystallization.  My  friend  had  been 
several  things  of  no  moment  until  he  struck 
a  thousand-dollar  pocket  in  the  Lee  District 
and  came  into  his  vocation.  A  pocket,  you 
must  know,  is  a  small  body  of  rich  ore  oc- 
curring by  itself,  or  in  a  vein  of  poorer  stuff. 
Nearly  every  mineral  ledge  contains  such, 
if  only  one  has  the  luck  to  hit  upon  them 
without  too  much  labor.  The  sensible 
thinor  for  a  man  to  do  who  has  found  a  grood 
pocket  is  to  buy  himself  into  business  and 
keep  away  from  the  hills.  The  logical  thing 
is  to  set  out  looking  for  another  one.  My 
friend  the  Pocket  Hunter  had  been  lookinor 
66 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

twenty  years.  His  working  outfit  was  a 
shovel,  a  pick,  a  gold  pan  which  he  kept 
cleaner  than  his  plate,  and  a  pocket  mag- 
nifier. When  he  came  to  a  watercourse 
he  would  pan  out  the  gravel  of  its  bed  for 
"  colors,"  and  under  the  glass  determine  if 
they  had  come  from  far  or  near,  and  so  spy- 
ing he  would  work  up  the  stream  until  he 
found  where  the  drift  of  the  gold-bearing 
outcrop  fanned  out  into  the  creek  ;  then 
up  the  side  of  the  caiion  till  he  came  to 
the  proper  vein.  I  think  he  said  the  best 
indication  of  small  pockets  was  an  iron 
stain,  but  I  could  never- get  the  run  of 
miner's  talk  enough  to  feel  instructed  for 
pocket  hunting.  He  had  another  method 
in  the  waterless  hills,  where  he  would  work 
in  and  out  of  blind  gullies  and-atl-wTTTdings 
of  the  manifold  strata  that  appeared  not 
to  have  cooled  since  they  had  been  heaved 
^7 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

up.  His  itinerary  began  with  the  east 
slope  of  the  Sierras  of  the  Snows,  where 
that  range  swings  across  to  meet  the  coast 
hills,  and  all  up  that  slope  to  the  Truckee 
River  country,  where  the  long  cold  forbade 
his  progress  north.  Then  he  worked  back 
down  one  or  another  of  the  nearly  parallel 
ranges  that  lie  out  desertward,  and  so  down 
to  the  sink  of  the  Mojave  River,  burrowing 
to  oblivion  in  the  sand,  —  a  big  mysterious 
land,  a  lonely,  inhospitable  land,  beautiful, 
terrible.  But  he  came  to  no  harm  in  it ;  the 
land  tolerated  him  as  it  might  a  gopher  or 
a  badger.  Of  all  its  inhabitants  it  has  the 
least  concern  for  man. 

There  are  many  strange  sorts  of  humans 
bred  in  a  mining  country,  each  sort  despis- 
ing the  queernesses  of  the  other,  but  of  them 
all  I  found  the  Pocket  Hunter  most  accept- 
able for  his  clean,  companionable  talk. 
68 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 


There  was  more  color  to  his  reminiscences 
than  the  faded  sandy  old  miners  "kyo.te- 
ing,"  that  is,  tunneling  like  a  coyote  (kyote 
in  the  vernacular)  in  the  core  of  a  lonesome 
hill.  Suefra-ewe  has  found,  perhaps,  a  body 
of  tolerable  ore  in  a  poor  lead,  —  remember 
that  I  can  never  be  depended  on  to  get  the 
terms  right,  —  and  followed  it  into  the  heart 
of  country  rock  to  no  profit,  hoping,  bur- 
rowing, and  hoping.  These  men  go  harm- 
lessly mad  in  time,  believing  themselves 
just  behind  the  wall  of  fortune  —  most  lik- 
able and  simple  men,  for  whom  it  is  well 
to  do  any  kindly  thing  that  occurs  to  you 
except  lend  them  money.  I  have  known 
"  grub  stakers  "  too,  those  persuasive  sin- 
ners to  whom  you  make  allowances  of  flour 
and  pork  and  coffee  in  consideration  of  the 
ledges  they  are  about  to  find ;  but  none  of 
these  proved  so  much  worth  while  as  the 
.69 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

/Pocket   Hunter.      He  wanted  nothing  of 
)  you  and  maintained  a  cheerful  preference 
for  his  own  way  of  Hfe.     It  was  an  excellent 
way  if  you  had  the  constitution  for  it.    The 
Pocket   Hunter  had  gotten   to  that  point 
where  he  knew   no  bad  weather,  and  all 
places  were  equally  happy  so  long  as  they 
[were  out  of  doors,     I  do   not  know  just 
how  long  it  takes  to  become  saturated  with 
ithe  elements  so  that  one  takes  no  account 
iof  them.     Myself  can  never  get  past  the 
glow  and  exhilaration  of  a  storm,  the  wrestle 
of  long  dust-heavy  winds,  the  play  of  live 
thunder  on  the  rocks,  nor  past  the   keen 
fret   of  fatigue   when    the    storm   outlasts 
/^physical  endurance.     But  prospectors  and 
4-        /  Indians  get  a  kind  of  a  weather  shell  that 
/    remains  on  the  body  until  death. 

The  Pocket  Hunter  had  seen  destruction 
by  the  violence  of  nature  and  the  violence 
70 


H 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

of  men,  and  felt  himself  in  the  grip  of  an 
Ail-wisdom  that  killed  men  or  spared  them 
as  seemed  for  their  good  ;  but  of^death  by- 
sickness  he  knew  nothing_except  that  he 
believed  he  should  never  suffer  it.  He  had 
been  in  Grape-vine  Cafion  the  year  of  storms 
that  changed  the  whole  front  of  the  moun- 
tain. All  day  he  had  come  down  under 
the  wing  of  the  storm,  hoping  to  win  past  it, 
but  finding  it  traveling  with  him  until  night. 
It  kept  on  after  that,  he  supposed,  a  steady 
downpour,  but  could  not  wath  certainty 
say,  being  securely  deep  in  sleep.  But  the 
weather  instinct  does  not  sleep.  In  the 
night  the  heavens  behind  the  hill  dissolved 
in  rain,  and  the  roar  of  the  storm  was  borne 
in  and  mixed  with  his  dreaming,  so  that  it 
moved  him,  still  asleep,  to  get  up  and  out 
of  the  path  of  it.  What  finally  woke  him 
was  the  crash  of  pine  logs  as  they  went  down 
71 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

before  the  unbridled  flood,  and  the  swirl  of 
foam  that  lashed  him  where  he  clung  in  the 
tangle  of  scrub  while  the  wall  of  water  went 
by.  It  went  on  against  the  cabin  of  Bill 
Gerry  and  laid  Bill  stripped  and  broken  on 
a  sand  bar  at  the  mouth  of  the  Grape-vine, 
seven  miles  away.  There,  when  the  sun 
was  up  and  the  wrath  of  the  rain  spent,  the 
Pocket  Hunter  found  and  buried  him;  but 
he  never  laid  his  own  escape  at  any  door 
but  the  unintelligible  favor  of  the  Powers. 
The  journeyings  of  the  Pocket  Hunter 
led  him  often  into  that  mysterious  country 
beyond  Hot  Creek  where  a  hidden  force 
works  mischief,  mole-like,  under  the  crust 
of  the  earth.  Whatever  agency  is  at  work 
in  that  neighborhood,  and  it  is  popularly- 
supposed  to  be  the  devil,  it  changes  means 
and  direction  without  time  or  season.  It 
creeps  up  whole  hillsides  with  insidious 
72 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

heat,  unguessed  until  one  notes  the  pine 
woods  dying  at  the  top,  and  having  scorched 
out  a  good  block  of  timber  returns  to  steam 
and  spout  in  caked,  forgotten  crevices  of 
years  before.  It  will  break  up  sometimes 
blue-hot  and  bubbling,  in  the  midst  of  a 
clear  creek,  or  make  a  sucking,  scalding 
quicksand  at  the  ford.  These  outbreaks 
had  the  kind  of  morbid  interest  for  the 
Pocket  Hunter  that  a  house  of  unsavory 
reputation  has  in  a  respectable  neighbor- 
hood, but  I  always  found  the  accounts  he 
brought  me  more  interesting  than  his 
explanations,  which  were  compounded  of 
fa;g  ends  of  miner's  talk  and  superstition. 
He  was  a  perfect  gossip  of  the  woods,  this 
Pocket  Hunter,  and  when  I  could  get  him 
away  from  "  leads  "  and  "  strikes "  and 
"  contacts,"  full  of  fascinating  small  talk 
about   the   ebb   and   flood   of   creeks,   the 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

pinon  crop  on  Black  Mountain,  and  the 
wolves  of  Mesquite  Valley.  I  suppose  he 
never  knew  how  much  he  depended  for 
the  necessary  sense  of  home  and  compan- 
ionship on  the  beasts  and  trees,  meeting 
and  finding  them  in  their  wonted  places, 
—  the  bear  that  used  to  come  down  Pine 
Creek  in  the  spring,  pawing  out  trout 
from  the  shelters  of  sod  banks,  the  juniper 
at  Lone  Tree  Spring,  and  the  quail  at 
Paddy  Jack's. 

There  is  a  place  on  Waban,  south  of 
White  Mountain,  where  flat,  wind-tilted 
cedars  make  low  tents  and  coves  of  shade 
and  shelter,  where  the  wild  sheep  winter 
in  the  snow.  Woodcutters  and  prospectors 
had  brought  me  word  of  that,  but  the 
Pocket  Hunter  was  accessory  to  the  fact. 
About  the  opening  of  winter,  when  one 
looks  for  sudden  big  storms,  he  had  at- 
74 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

tempted  a  crossing  by  the  nearest  path, 
beginning  the  ascent  at  noon.  It  grew 
cold,  the  snow  came  on  thick  and  blind- 
ing, and  wiped  out  the  trail  in  a  white 
smudge ;  the  storm  drift  blew  in  and  cut 
off  landmarks,  the  early  dark  obscured 
the  rising  drifts.  According  to  the  Pocket 
Hunter's  account,  he  knew  where  he  was, 
but  could  n't  exactly  say.  Three  days  be- 
fore he  had  been  in  the  west  arm  of  Death'v 
Valley  on  a  short  water  allowance,  ankle- 
deep  in  shifty  sand  ;  now  he  was  on  the 
rise  of  Waban,  knee-deep  in  sodden  snow, 
and  in  both  cases  he  did  the  only  allow- 
able thing — he  walked  on.  That  is  the 
only  thing  to  do  in  a  snowstorm  in  any 
casCi  .  It  might  have  been  the  creature 
instinct,  which  in  his  way  of  life  had  room 
to  grow,  that  led  him  to  the  cedar  shelter; 
at  any  rate  he  found  it  about  four  hours 
75 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

after  dark,  and  heard  the  heavy  breathing 
of  the  flock.  He  said  that  if  he  thought  at 
all  at  this  juncture  he  must  have  thought 
that  he  had  stumbled  on  a  storm-belated 
shepherd  with  his  silly  sheep;  but  in  fact 
he  took  no  note  of  anything  but  the  warmth 
of  packed  fleeces,  and  snuggled  in  be- 
tween them  dead  with  sleep.  If  the  flock 
stirred  in  the  night  he  stirred  drowsily  to 
keep  close  and  let  the  storm  go  by.  That 
was  all  until  morning  woke  him  shining 
on  a  white  world.  Then  the  very  soul  of 
him  shook  to  see  the  wild  sheep^of  God 
stand  up  about  him,  nodding  their  great 
horns  beneath  the  cedar  roof,  looking  out 
on  the  wonder  of  the  snow.  They  had 
moved  a  little  away  from  him  with  the 
coming  of  the  light,  but  paid  him  no  more 
heed.  The  light  broadened  and  the  white 
pavilions  of  the  snow  swam  in  the  hea- 
76- 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

venly  blueness  of  the  sea  from  which 
they  rose.  The  cloud  drift  scattered  and 
broke  billowing  in  the  canons.  The  leader 
stamped  lightly  on  the  litter  to  put  the 
flock  in  motion,  suddenly  they  took  the 
drifts  in  those  long  light  leaps,  that  are 
nearest  to  flight,  down  and  away  on  the 
slopes  of  Waban.  Think  of  that  to  hap- 
pen to  a  Pocket  Hunter!  But  though  he 
had  fallen  on  many  a  wished-for  hap,  he 
was  curiously  inapt  at  getting  the  truth 
about  beasts  in  general.  He  believed  in 
the  venom  of  toads,  and  charms  for  snake 
bites,  and  —  for  this  I  could  never  forgive 
him  —  had  all  the  miner's  prejudices  against 
my  friend  the  coyote.  Thief,  sneak,  and 
son  of  a  thief,  were  the  friendliest  words 
he  had  for  this  little  gray  dog  of  the  wil- 
derness. 

Of  course  with  so  much  seeking  he  came 
77 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 

occasionally  upon  pockets  of  more  or  less 
value,  otherwise  he  could  not  have  kept  up 
his  way  of  life ;  but  he  had  as  much  luck 
in  missing  great  ledges  as  in  finding  small 
ones.  He  had  been  all  over  the  Tonopah 
country,  and  brought  away  float  without 
happening  upon  anything  that  gave  pro- 
mise of  what  that  district  was  to  become  in 
a  few  years.  He  claimed  to  have  chipped 
bits  off  the  very  outcrop  of  the  California 
Rand,  without  finding  it  worth  while  to 
bring  away,  butHrone  of  tlTese  things  put 
him_aut^  countenance. 

It  was  once  in  roving  weather,  when 
we  found  hirri  shifting  pack  on  a  steep 
trail,  that  I  observed  certain  of  his  be- 
longings done  up  in  green  canvas  bags, 
the.„v£ritable  "green  bag"  of  English- jiqy-^ 
els.  It  seemed  so  incongruous  a  reminder 
in  this  untenanted  West  that  I  dropped 
78  •      • 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 


down  beside  the  trail  overlooking  the  vast 
dim  valley,  to  hear  about  the  green  canvas,  j 
He  had  gotten  it,  he  said,  in  London  years  S 
before,  and  that  was  the  first  I  had  known  / 
of  his  having  been  abroad.     It  was  after  ) 
one  of  his  "  big  strikes  "  that  he  had  made 
the  Grand  Tour,  and  had  brought  nothing 
away  from  it  but  the  green  canvas  bags, 
which  he  conceived  would   fit  his  needs, 
and  an  ambition.     This  last  was  nothing 
less  than  to  strike  it  rich  and  set  himself 
up  among  the  eminently  bourgeois  of  Lon- 
don.    It  seemed  that  the  situation  of  the 
wealthy   English    middle    class,   with   just 
enough  gentility  above   to  aspire  to,  and 
sufficient  smaller  fry  to  bully  and  patronize, 
appealed    to    his    imagination,   though    of   , 
course  he  did  not  put  it  so  crudely  as  that.    ■ 

It  was  no  news  to  me  then,  two  or  three 
years  after,  to  learn  that  he  had  taken  ten 
79 


THE    POCKET    HUNTER 


thousand  dollars  from  an  abandoned  claim, 
just  the  sort  of  luck  to  have  pleased  him, 
and  gone  to  London  to  spend  it.  The 
land  seemed  not  to  miss  him  any  more 
than  it  had  minded  him,  but  I  missed  him 
and  could  not  forget  the  trick  of  expecting 
him  in  least  likely  situations.  Therefore 
it  was  with  a  pricking  sense  of  the  familiar 
that  I  followed  a  twilight  trail  of  smoke,  a 
year  or  two  later,  to  the  swale  of  a  drip- 
ping spring,  and  came  upon  a  man  by  the 
fire  with  a  coffee-pot  and  frying-pan.  I 
was  not  surprised  to  find  it  was  the  Pocket 
Hunter.  'No  man  can  be  stronger' tMn 
his  destiny. 


SHOSHONE    LAND 


SHOSHONE  LAND 


IT  is  true  I  have  been  in  Shoshone  Land, 
but  before  that,  long  before,  I  had  seen  it 
through  the  eyes  of  Winnenap'  in  a  rosy 
mist  of  reminiscence,  and  must  always  see 
it  with  a  sense  of  intimacy  in  the  Hght  that 
never  was.  Sitting  on  the  golden  slope  at 
the  campoodie,  looking  across  the  Bitter, 
Lake  to  the  purple  tops  of  Mutarango,  the 
medicine-man  drew  up  its  happy  places 
one  by  one,  like  little (j|(iPssfd  islands  in  a 
sea  of  talk.  For  he  wa'S  born  a  Shoshone, 
was  Winnenap';  and  though  his  name,  his 
wife,  his  children,  and  his  tribal  relations 
were  of  the  Paiutes,  his  thoughts  turned 
homesickly  toward  Shoshone  Land.  Once 
a  Shoshone  always  a  Shoshone.  Winne- 
nap' lived  gingerly  among  the  Paiutes  and 
83 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

in  his  heart  despised  them.  But  he  could 
speak  a  tolerable  English  when  he  would, 
and  he  always  would  if  it  were  of  Shoshone 
Land. 

He  had  come  into  the  keeping  of  the 
Paiutes  as  a  hostage  for  the  long  peace 
which  the  authority  of  the  whites  made 
interminable,  and,  though  there  was  now 
no  order  in  the  tribe,  nor  any  power  that 
could  have  lawfully  restrained  him,  kept 
on  in  the  old  usage,  to  save  his  honor  and 
the  word  of  his  vanished  kin.  He  had 
seen  his  children's  children  in  the  borders 
of  the  Paiutes,  but  loved  best  his  own 
miles  of  sand  and  rainbow-painted  hills. 
Professedly  he  had  not  seen  them  since 
the  beginning  of  his  hostage ;  but  every 
year  about  the  end  of  the  rains  and  before 
the  strength  of  the  sun  had  come  upon  us 
from  the  south,  the  medicine-man  went 
84 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

apart  on  the  mountains  to  gather  herbs, 
and  when  he  came  again  I  knew  by  the 
new  fortitude  of  his  countenance  and  the 
new  color  of  his  reminiscences  that  he  had 
been  alone  and  unspied  upon  in  Shoshone 
Land. 

To  reach  that  country  from  the  cam- 
poodie,  one  goes  south  and  south,  within' 
hearing  of  the  lip-lip-lapping  of  the  great 
tideless  lake,  and  south  by  east  over  a 
high  rolling  district,  miles  and  miles  of 
sage  and  nothing  else.  So  one  comes  to 
the  country  of  the  painted  hills,  —  old  red 
cones  of  craters,  wasteful  beds  of  mineral 
earths,  hot,  acrid  springs,  and  steam  jets 
issuing  from  a  leprous  soil.  After  the 
hills  the  black  rock,  after  the  craters  the 
spewed  lava,  ash  strewn,  of  incredible 
thickness,  and  full  of  sharp,  winding  rifts. 
There  are  picture  writings  carved  deep  in 
85 


(■ 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

the  face  of  the  cHffs  to  mark  the  way  for 
those  who  do  not  know  it.  On  the  very 
edge  of  the  black  rock  the  earth  falls  away 
in  a  wide  sweeping  hollow,  which  is  Sho- 
shone Land. 

South  the  land  rises  in  very  blue  hills, 
blue  because  thickly  wooded  with  ceano- 
thus  and  manzanita,  the  haunt  of  deer  and 
the  border  of  the  Shoshones.  Eastward 
the  land  goes  very  far  by  broken  ranges, 
narrow  valleys  of  pure  desertness,  and 
huge  mesas  uplifted  to  the  sky-line,  east 
and  east,  and  no  man  knows  the  end  of  it. 

It  is  the  country  of  the  bighorn,  the 
wapiti,  and  the  wolf,  nesting  place  of  buz- 
zards, land  of  cloud-nourished  trees  and 
wild  things  that  live  without  drink.  Above 
all,  it  is  the  land  of  the  creosote  and  the 
mesquite.  The  mesquite  is  Gods  best 
thought  in  all  this  desertness.     It  grows 


86 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

in  the  open,  is  thorny,  stocky,  close  grown, 
and  iron-rooted.  Long  winds  move  in  the 
draughty  valleys,  blown  sand  fills  and  fills 
about  the  lower  branches,  piling  pyramidal 
dunes,  from  the  top  of  which  the  mesquite 
twigs  flourish  greenly.  Fifteen  or  twenty' 
feet  under  the  drift,  where  it  seems  no  rain 
could  penetrate,  the  main  trunk  grows, 
attaining  often  a  yard's  thickness,  resist- 
ant as  oak.  In  Shoshone  Land  one  digs 
for  large  timber ;  that  is  in  the  southerly, 
sandy  exposures.  Higher  on  the  table- 
topped  ranges  low  trees  of  juniper  and 
pinon  stand  each  apart,  rounded  and 
spreading  heaps  of  greenness.  Between 
them,  but  each  to  itself  in  smooth  clear 
spaces,  tufts  of  tall  feathered  grass. 

This  is  the  sense  of  the  desert  hills,  that 
there  is  room  enough   and   time  enough. 
Trees  grow  to  consummate  domes ;  every 
^7 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

plant  has  its  perfect  work.  Noxious  weeds 
such  as  come  up  thickly  in  crowded  fields 
do  not  flourish  in  the  free  spaces.  Live 
long  enough  with  an  Indian,  and  he  or 
the  wild  things  will  show  you  a  use  for 
everything  that  grows  in  these  borders. 

The  manner  of  the  country  makes  the 
usage  of  life  there,  and  the  land  will  not 
be  lived  in  except  in  its  own  fashion.  The 
Shoshones  live  like  their  trees,  with  great 
spaces  between,  and  in  pairs  and  in  family 
'groups  they  set  up  wattled  huts  by  the  in- 
frequent springs.  More  wickiups  than  two 
make  a  very  great  number.  Their  shelters 
are  lightly  built,  for  they  travel  much  and 
far,  following  where  deer  feed  and  seeds 
ripen,  but  they  are  not  more  lonely  than 
other  creatures  that  inhabit  there. 

The  year's  round  is  somewhat  in  this 
fashion.      After   the    pinon    harvest    the 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

clans  foregather  on  a  warm  southward 
slope  for  the  annual  adjustment  of  tribal 
difficulties  and  the  medicine  dance,  for 
marriage  and  mourning  and  vengeance, 
and  the  exchange  of  serviceable  informa- 
tion ;  if,  for  example,  the  deer  have  shifted 
their  feeding  ground,  if  the  wild  sheep 
have  come  back  to  Waban,  or  certain 
springs  run  full  or  dry.  Here  the  Sho- 
shones  winter  flockwise,  weaving  baskets 
and  hunting  big  game  driven  down  from 
the  country  of  the  deep  snow.  And  this 
brief  intercourse  is  all  the  use  they  have  of 
their  kind,  for  now  there  are  no  wars,  and 
many  of  their  ancient  crafts  have  fallen 
into  disuse.  The  solitariness  of  the  life 
breeds  in  the  men,  as  in  the  plants,  a  cer- 
tain well-roundedness  and  sufficiency  to  its 
own  ends.  Any  Shoshone  family  has  in 
itself  the  man-seed,  power  to  multiply  and 
89 


SHOSHONE    LAND 


replenish,  potentialities  for  food  and  cloth- 
ing and  shelter,  for  healing  and  beautify- 
ing. 

When  the  rain  is  over  and  gone  they 
are  stirred  by  the  instinct  of  those  that 
journeyed  eastward  from  Eden,  and  go  up 
each  with  his  mate  and  young  brood,  like 
birds  to  old  nesting  places.  The  begin- 
ning of  spring  in  Shoshone  Land  —  oh 
the  soft  wonder  of  it!  —  is  a  mistiness  as 
of  incense  smoke,  a  veil  of  afreenness  over 
the  whitish  stubby  shrubs,  a  web  of  color 
on  the  silver  sanded  soil.  No  counting 
covers  the  multitude  of  rayed  blossoms 
that  break  suddenly  underfoot  in  the  brief 
season  of  the  winter  rains,  with  silky  furred 
or  prickly  viscid  foliage,  or  no  foliage  at  all. 
They  are  morning  and  evening  bloomers 
chiefly,  and  strong  seeders.  Years  of  scant 
rains  they  lie  shut  and  safe  in  the  win- 
90 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

nowed  sands,  so  that  some  species  appear 
to  be  extinct.  Years  of  long  storms  they 
break  so  thickly  into  bloom  that  no  horse 
treads  without  crushing  them.  These 
years  the  gullies  of  the  hills  are  rank  with 
fern  and  a  great  tangle  of  climbing  vines. 

Just  as  the  mesa  twilights  have  their 
vocal  note  in  the  love  call  of  the  burrow- 
ing owl,  so  the  desert  spring  is  voiced  by 
the  mourning  doves.  Welcome  and  sweet 
they  sound  in  the  smoky  mornings  before 
breeding  time,  aad  where  they  frequent  in 
any  great  numbers  water  is  confidently 
looked  for.  Still  by  the  springs  one  finds 
the  cunning  brush  shelters  from  which  the 
Shoshones  shot  arrows  at  them  when  the 
doves  came  to  drink. 

Now  as  to  these  same  Shoshones  there 
are  some  who  claim  that  they  have  no  right 
to  the  name,  which  belongs  to  a  more  north- 
91 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

erly  tribe  ;  but  that  is  the  word  they  will  be 
called  by,  and  there  is  no  greater  offense 
than  to  call  an  Indian  out  of  his  name. 
According  to  their  traditions  and  all  proper 
evidence,  they  were  a  great  people  occu- 
pying far  north  and  east  of  their  present 
bounds,  driven  thence  by  the  Paiutes.  Be- 
tween the  two  tribes  is  the  residuum  of  old 
hostilities. 

Winnenap',  whose  memory  ran  to  the 
time  when  the  boundary  of  the  Paiute  coun- 
try was  a  dead-line  to  Shoshones,  told  me 
once  how  himself  and  another  lad,  in  an 
unforgotten  spring,  discovered  a  nesting 
place  of  buzzards  a  bit  of  a  way  beyond  the 
borders.  And  they  two  burned  to  rob  those 
nests.  Oh,  for  no  purpose  at  all  except  as 
boys  rob  nests  immemorially,  for  the  fun 
of  it,  to  have  and  handle  and  show  to  other 
lads  as  an  exceeding  treasure,  and  after- 
92 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

wards  discard.  So,  not  quite  meaning  to, 
but  breathless  with  daring,  they  crept  up  a 
gully,  across  a  sage  brush  flat  and  through 
a  waste  of  boulders,  to  the  rugged  pines 
where  their  sharp  eyes  had  made  out  the 
buzzards  settling. 

The  medicine-man  told  me,  always  with 
a  quaking  relish  at  this  point,  that  while 
they,  grown  bold  by  success,  were  still  in 
the  tree,  they  sighted  a  Paiute  hunting 
party  crossing  between  them  and  their 
own  land.  That  was  mid-morning,  and  all 
day  on  into  the  dark  the  boys  crept  and 
crawled  and  slid,  from  boulder  to  bush, 
and  bush  to  boulder,  in  cactus  scrub  and 
on  naked  sand,  always  in  a  sweat  of  fear, 
until  the  dust  caked  in  the  nostrils  and 
the  breath  sobbed  in  the  body,  around 
and  away  many  a  mile  until  they  came  to 
their  own  land  again.  And  all  the  time 
93 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

Winnenap'  carried  those  buzzard's  eggs  in 
the  slack  of  his  single  buckskin  garment ! 
Young  Shoshones  are  like  young  quail, 
knowing  without  teaching  about  feeding 
and  hiding,  and  learning  what  civilized  chil- 
dren never  learn,  to  be  still  and  to  keep  on 
being  still,  at  the  first  hint  of  danger  or 
strangeness. 

As  for  food,  that  appears  to  be  chiefly  a 

/  matter  of  being  willing.    Desert  Indians  all 
eat  chuck-wallas,  big  black  and  white  liz- 

/ards  that  have  delicate  white  flesh  savored 
like  chicken.  Both  the  Shoshones  and  the 
coyotes  are  fond  of  the  flesh  of  Gophertts 
agassizii,  the  turtle  that  by  feeding  on 
buds,  going  without  drink,  and  burrowing 
in  the  sand  through  the  winter,  contrives 
to  live  a  known  period  of  twenty-five  years. 
It  seems  that  most  seeds  are  foodful  in  the 
arid  regions,  most  berries  edible,  and  many 
94 


SHOSHONE    LAND 


shrubs  good  for  firewood  with  the  sap  in 
them.  The  mesquite  bean,  whether  the 
screw  or  straight  pod,  pounded  to  a  meal, 
boiled  to  a  kind  of  mush,  and  dried  in 
cakes,  sulphur-colored  and  needing  an  axe 
to  cut  it,  is  an  excellent  food  for  long  jour- 
neys. Fermented  in  water  with  wild  honey 
and  the  honeycomb,  it  makes  a  pleasant, 
mildly  intoxicating  drink. 

Next  to  spring,  the  best  time  to  visit 
Shoshone  Land  is  when  the  deer-star  hangs 
low  and  white  like  a  torch  over  the  morn- 
ing hills.  Go  up  past  Winnedumah  and 
down  Saline  and  up  again  to  the  rim  of 
Mesquite  Valley.  Take  no  tent,  but  if  you 
will,  have  an  Indian  build  you  a  wickiup, 
willows  planted  in  a  circle,  drawn  over  to 
an  arch,  and  bound  cunningly  with  withes, 
all  the  leaves  on,  and  chinks  to  count  the 
stars  through.  But  there  was  never  any 
95 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

but  Winnenap'  who  could  tell  and  make 
it  worth  telling  about  Shoshone  Land. 

And  Winnenap'  will  not  any  more.  He 
died,  as  do  most  medicine-men  of  the 
Paiutes. 

Where  the  lot  falls  when  the  campoodie 
chooses  a  medicine-man  there  it  rests.  It 
is  an  honor  a  man  seldom  seeks  but  must 
wear,  an  honor  with  a  condition.  When 
three  patients  die  under  his  ministrations, 
the  medicine-man  must  yield  his  life  and 
his  office.  Wounds  do  not  count ;  broken 
bones  and  bullet  holes  the  Indian  can 
understand,  but  measles,  pneumonia,  and 
smallpox  are  witchcraft.  Winnenap'  was 
medicine-man  for  fifteen  years.  Besides 
considerable  skill  in  healing  herbs,  he  used 
his  prerogatives  cunningly.  It  is  permit- 
ted the  medicine-man  to  decline  the  case 
when  the  patient  has  had  treatment  from 
96 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

any  other,  say  the  white  doctor,  whom 
many  of  the  younger  generation  consult. 
Or,  if  before  having  seen  the  patient,  he 
can  definitely  refer  his  disorder  to  some 
supernatural  cause  wholly  out  of  the  medi- 
cine-man's jurisdiction,  say  to  the  spite  of 
an  evil  spirit  going  about  in  the  form  of 
a  coyote,  and  states  the  case  convincingly, 
he  may  avoid  the  penalty.  But  this  must 
not  be  pushed  too  far.  All  else  failing,  he 
can  hide.  Winnenap'  did  this  the  time  of 
the  measles  epidemic.  Returning  from  his 
yearly  herb  gathering,  he  heard  of  it  at 
Black  Rock,  and  turning  aside,  he  was  not 
to  be  found,  nor  did  he  return  to  his  own 
place  until  the  disease  had  spent  itself, 
and  half  the  children  of  the  campoodie 
were  in  their  shallow  graves  with  beads 
sprinkled  over  them. 

It  is  possible  the  tale  of   Winnenap's 
97 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

patients  had  not  been  strictly  kept.  There 
had  not  been  a  medicine-man  killed  in 
the  valley  for  twelve  years,  and  for  that  the 
perpetrators  had  been  severely  punished 
by  the  whites.  The  winter  of  the  Big 
Snow  an  epidemic  of  pneumonia  carried 
off  the  Indians  with  scarcely  a  warning; 
from  the  lake  northward  to  the  lava  flats 
they  died  in  the  sweat-houses,  and  under 
the  hands  of  the  medicine-men.  Even  the 
drugs  of  the  white  physician  had  no  power. 
After  two  weeks  of  this  plague  the  Pai- 
utes  drew  to  council  to  consider  the  re- 
missness of  their  medicine-men.  They 
were  sore  with  grief  and  afraid  for  them- 
selves ;  as  a  result  of  the  council,  one  in 
every  campoodie  was  sentenced  to  the  an- 
cient penalty.  But  schooling  and  native 
shrewdness  had  raised  up  in  the  younger 
men  an  unfaith  in  old  usages,  so  judgment 
98 


ARRIVAL   OF   THE   EXECUTIONERS 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

halted  between  sentence  and  execution. 
At  Three  Pines  the  government  teacher 
brought  out  influential  whites  to  threaten 
and  cajole  the  stubborn  tribes.  At  Tuna- 
wai  the  conservatives  sent  into  Nevada  for 
that  pacific  old  humbug,  Johnson  Sides, 
most  notable  of  Paiute  orators,  to  harangue 
his  people.  Citizens  of  the  towns  turned 
out  with  food  and  comforts,  and  so  after  a 
season  the  trouble  passed. 

But  here  at  Maverick  there  was  no 
school,  no  oratory,  and  no  alleviation. 
One  third  of  the  campoodie  died,  and  the 
rest  killed  the  medicine-men.  Winnenap' 
expected  it,  and  for  days  walked  and  sat  a 
little  apart  from  his  family  that  he  might 
meet  it  as  became  a  Shoshone,  no  doubt 
suffering  the  agony  of  dread  deferred. 
When  finally  three  men  came  and  sat  at 
his  fire  without  greeting  he  knew  his  time. 
99 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

He  turned  a  little  from  theni,  dropped  his 
chin  upon  his  knees,  and  looked  out  over 
Shoshone  Land,  breathing  evenly.  The 
women  went  into  the  wickiup  and  covered 
their  heads  with  their  blankets. 

So  much  has  the  Indian  lost  of  savage- 
ness  by  merely  desisting  from  killing,  that 
the  executioners  braved  themselves  to  their 
work  by  drinking  and  a  show  of  quarrel- 
someness. In  the  end  a  sharp  hatchet- 
stroke  discharged  the  duty  of  the  cam- 
poodie.  Afterward  his  women  buried  him, 
and  a  warm  wind  coming  out  of  the  south, 
the  force  of  the  disease  was  broken,  and 
even  they  acquiesced  in  the  wisdom  of 
the  tribe.  That  summer  they  told  me  all 
except  the  names  of  the  Three. 

Since  it  appears  that  we  make  our  own 
heaven  here,  no  doubt  we  shall  have  a 
hand   in   the   heaven  of  hereafter;    and    I 

lOO 


SHOSHONE    LAND 

know  what  Winnenap' s  will  be  like : 
worth  going  to  if  one  has  leave  to  live  in 
it  according  to  his  liking.  It  will  be  tawny 
gold  underfoot,  walled  up  with  jacinth  andi 
jasper,  ribbed  with  chalcedony,  and  yet  no 
hymn-book  heaven,  but  the  free  air  and 
free  spaces  of  Shoshone  Land. 


— ^^-4-  --■  ■    \ 


fi^; 


JIMVILLE 

A   BRET   HARTE   TOWN 


JIMVILLE 

A    BRET    HARTE    TOWN 

WHEN  Mr.  Harte  found  himself  with 
a  fresh  palette  and  his  particular 
local  color  fading  from  the  West,  he  did 
what  he  considered  the  only  safe  thing,  and 
carried  his  young  impression  away  to  be 
worked  out  untroubled  by  any  newer  fact. 
He  should  have  gone  to  Jimville.  There  he 
would  have  found  cast  up  on  the  ore-ribbed 
hills  the  bleached  timbers  of  more  tales,  and 
better  ones. 

You  could  not  think  of  Jimville  as  any- 
thing more  than  a  survival,  like  the  herb- 
eating,  bony-cased  old  tortoise  that  pokes 
cheerfully  about  those  borders  some  thou- 
sands of  years  beyond  his  proper  epoch. 
105 


JIMVILLE 

Not  that  Jimville  is  old,  but  it  has  an  at- 
mosphere favorable  to  the  type  of  a  half 
century  back,  if  not  "  forty-niners,"  of  that 
breed.  It  is  said  of  Jimville  that  getting 
away  from  it  is  such  a  piece  of  work  that  it 
encourages  permanence  in  the  population ; 
the  fact  is  that  most  have  been  drawn  there 
by  some  real  likeness  or  liking.  Not  how- 
ever that  I  would  deny  the  difficulty  of  get- 
ting into  or  out  of  that  cove  of  reminder,  I 
who  have  made  the  journey  so  many  times 
C  at  great  pains  of  a  poor  body.  Any  way 
you  go  at  it,  Jimville  is  about  three  days 
from  anywhere  in  particular.  North  or 
south,  after  the  railroad  there  is  a  stage 
journey  of  such  interminable  monotony  as 
induces  forgetfulness  of  all  previous  states 
of  existence. 

The  road  to  Jimville  is  the  happy  hunt- 
ing ground  of    old   stage-coaches   bought 
1 06 


JIMVILLE 

up  from  superseded  routes  the  West  over, 
rocking,  lumbering,  wide  vehicles  far  gone 
in  the  odor  of  romance,  coaches  that  Vas- 
quez  has  held  up,  from  whose  high  seats 
express  messengers  have  shot  or  been  shot 
as  their  luck  held.  This  is  to  comfort  you 
when  the  driver  stops  to  rummage  for  wire 
to  mend  a  failing  bolt.  There  is  enough 
of  this  sort  of  thing  to  quite  prepare  you 
to  believe  what  the  driver  insists,  namely, 
that  all  that  country  and  Jimville  are  held 
together  by  wire. 

First  on  the  way  to  Jimville  you  cross  a 
lonely  open  land,  with  a  hint  in  the  sky  of 
things  going  on  under  the  horizon,  a  pal- 
pitant, white,  hot  land  where  the  wheels 
gird  at  the  sand  and  the  midday  heaven 
shuts  it  in  breathlessly  like  a  tent.  So  in 
still  weather ;  and  when  the  wind  blows 
there  is  occupation  enough  for  the  passen- 
107 


JIMVILLE 

gers,  shifting  seats  to  hold  down  the  wind- 
ward side  of  the  wagging  coach.  This  is 
a  mere  trifle.  The  Jimville  stage  is  built 
for  five  passengers,  but  when  you  have 
seven,  with  four  trunks,  several  parcels, 
three  sacks  of  grain,  the  mail  and  express, 
you  begin  to  understand  that  proverb 
about  the  road  which  has  been  reported 
to  you.     In  time  you  learn  to  engage  the 

/  high  seat  beside  the  driver,  where  you 
get  good  air  and  the  best  company.  Be- 
yond the  desert  rise  the  lava  flats,  scoriae 
strewn ;  sharp-cutting  walls  of  narrow  ca- 
ynons ;  league-wide,  frozen  puddles  of  black 

/rock,  intolerable  and  forbidding.     Beyond 

^  the  lava  the  mouths  that  spewed  it  out, 
ragged-lipped,  ruined  craters  shouldering 
to  the  cloud-line,  mostly  of  red  earth,  as 
red    as   a  red    heifer.     These    have    some 

\  comforting  of  shrubs  and  grass.     You  get 

1 08 


^ 


JIMVILLE 

the  very  spirit  of  the  meaning  of  that 
country  when  you  see  Little  Pete  feeding 
his  sheep  in  the  red,  choked  maw  of  an  old 
vent,  —  a  kind  of  si]ly_B^storal  g^entleness 
that  Q:lozes  over  an  elemental  violence. 
Beyond  the  craters  rise  worn,  auriferous 
hills  of  a  quiet  sort,  tumbled  together;  a 
valley  full  of  mists  ;  whitish  green  scrub  ; 
and  bright,  small,  panting  lizards ;  then 
Jimville. 

The  town  looks  to  have  spilled  out  of 
Squaw  Gulch,  and  that,  in  fact,  is  the  se- 
quence of  its  growth.  It  began  around 
the  Bully  Boy  and  Theresa  group  of  mines 
midway  up  Squaw  Gulch,  spreading  down 
to  the  smelter  at  the  mouth  of  the  ravine. 
The  freight  wagons  dumped  their  loads  as 
near  to  the  mill  as  the  slope  allowed,  and 
Jimville  grew  in  between.  Above  the 
Gulch  begins  a  pine  wood  with  sparsely 
109 


'> 


JIMVILLE 

grown  thickets  of  lilac,  azalea,  and  odorous 
blossoming  shrubs. 

Squaw  Gulch  is  a  very  sharp,  steep, 
ragged-walled  ravine,  and  that  part  of  Jim- 
ville  which  is  built  in  it  has  only  one 
street,  —  in  summer  paved  with  bone- 
white  cobbles,  in  the  wet  months  a  frothy 
yellow  flood.  All  between  the  ore  dumps 
and  solitary  small  cabins,  pieced  out  with 
tin  cans  and  packing  cases,  run  footpaths 
drawing  down  to  the  Silver  Dollar  saloon. 
When  Jimville  was  having  the  time  of  its 
life  the  Silver  Dollar  had  those  same  coins 
let  into  the  bar  top  for  a  border,  but  the 
proprietor  pried  them  out  when  the  glory 
departed.  There  are  three  hundred  in- 
habitants in  Jimville  and  four  bars,  though 
you  are  not  to  argue  anything  from  that. 

Hear  now  how  Jimville  came  by  its 
name.  Jim  Calkins  discovered  the  Bully 
no 


JIMVILLE 

Boy,  Jim  Baker  located  the  Theresa. 
When  Jim  Jenkins  opened  an  eating- 
house  in  his  tent  he  chalked  up  on  the 
flap,  "  Best  meals  in  Jimville,  ^i.oo,"  and 
the  name  stuck. 

There  was  more  human  interest  in  the 
origin  of  Squaw  Gulch,  though  it  tickled 
no  humor.  It  was  Dimmick's  squaw  from 
Aurora  way.  If  Dimmick  had  been  any- 
thing except  New  Englander  he  would 
have  called  her  a  mahala,  but  that  would 
not  have  bettered  his  behavior.  Dimmick 
made  a  strike,  went  East,  and  the  squaw 
who  had  been  to  him  as  his  wife  took  to 
drink.  That  was  the  bald  way  of  stating 
it  in  the  Aurora  country.  The  milk  of 
human  kindness,  like  some  wine,  must  not' 
be  uncorked  too  much  in  speech  lest  it 
lose  savor.  This  is  what  they  did.  The 
woman  would  have  returned  to  her  own 
III 


JIMVILLE 

"people,  being  far  gone  with  child,  but  the 
drink  worked  her  bane.  By  the  river  of 
this  ravine  her  pains  overtook  her.  There 
Jim  Calkins,  prospecting,  found  her  dying 
with  a  three  days'  babe  nozzling  at  her 
breast.  Jim  heartened  her  for  the  end, 
buried  her,  and  walked  back  to  Poso, 
eighteen  miles,  the  child  poking  in  the 
folds  of  his  denim  shirt  with  srnall^neLwinor 
noises,  and  won  support  for  it  from  the 
rough-handed  folks  of  that  place.  Then 
he  came  back  to  Squaw  Gulch,  so  named 
from  that  day,  and  discovered  the  Bully 
Boy.  Jim  humbly  regarded  this  piece  of 
luck  as  interposed  for  his  reward,  and  I 
for  one  believed  him.  If  it  had  been  in 
mediaeval  times  you  would  have  had  a 
legend  or  a  ballad.  Bret  Harte  would 
have  given  you  a  tale.  You  see  i^  me  a- 
mere  recorder,  for  I  know  what  is  best  for 

112 


JIMVILLE 

you  ;  you  shall  blow  out  this  bubble  from 
your  own  breath. 

You  could  never  get  into  any  proper  re- 
lation to  Jimville  unless  you  could  slough 
off  and  swallow  your  acquired  prejudices 
as  a  lizard  does  his  skin.  Once  wanting 
some  womanly  attentions,  the  stage-driver 
assured  me  I  might  have  them  at  the  Nine- 
Mile  House  from  the  lady  barkeeper.  The 
phrase  tickled  all  my  after-dinner-coffee 
sense  of  humor  into  an  anticipation  of 
Poker  Flat.  The  stage-driver  proved  him- 
self really,  right,  though  you  are  not  to  sup- 
pose from  this  that  Jimville  had  no  conven- 
tions and  no  caste.  They  work  out  these 
things  in  the  personal  equation  largely. 
Almost  every  latitude  of  behavior  is  al- 
lowed a  good  fellow,  one  no  liar,  a  free 
spender,  and  a  backer  of  his  friends'  quar- 
rels. You  are  respected  in  as  much 
m 


JIMVILLE 

ground  as  you  can  shoot  over,  in  as  many 
pretensions  as  you  can  make  good. 

That  probably  explains  Mr.  Fanshawe, 
the  gentlemanly  faro  dealer  of  those  parts, 
"~SDuilt  for  the  role  of  Oakhurst,  going  white- 
/shirted  and  frock-coated  in  a  community 
\  of  overalls ;  and  persuading  you  that  what- 
\ever  shifts  and   tricks   of  the  game  were 
I  laid  to  his  deal,  he  could  not  practice  them 
on  a  person  of  your  penetration.     But  he 
does.      By  his  own  account  and   the  evi- 
dence of  his  manners  he  had  been   bred 
for  a  clergyman,  and  he  certainly  has  gifts 
for  the  part.     You  find  him  always  in  pos- 
session  of  your  point   of  view,  and  with 
an  evident  though  not  obtrusive  desire  to 
stand  well  with  you.     For  an  account  of 
his  killings,  for  his  way  with  women  and 
the  way  of  women  with  him,  I  refer  you 
to  Brown  of  Calaveras  and  some  others  of 
114 


JIMVILLE 

that  stripe.  His  improprieties  had  a  cer- 
tain sanction  of  long  standing  not  accorded 
to  the  gay  ladies  who  wore  Mr,  Fanshawe's 
favors.  There  were  perhaps  too  many  of 
them.  On  the  whole,  the  point  of  the 
moral  distinctions  of  Jimville  appears  to 
be  a  point  of  honor,  with  an  absence 
of  humorous  appreciation  that  strangers 
mistake  for  dullness.  At  Jimville  they 
see  behavior  as  history  and  judge  it  by 
facts,  untroubled  by  invention  and  the  dra- 
matic sense.  You  glimpse  a  crude  equity 
in  their  dealings  with  Wilkins,  who  had 
shot  a  man  at  Lone  Tree,  fairly,  in  an 
open  quarrel.  Rumor  of  it  reached  Jim- 
ville before  Wilkins  rested  there  in  flight. 
I  saw  Wilkins,  all  Jimville  saw  him ;  in 
fact,  he  came  into  the  Silver  Dollar  when 
we  were  holding  a  church  fair  and  bought 
a  pink  silk  pincushion.  I  have  often 
115 


JIMVILLE 

wondered  what  became  of  it.  Some  of  us 
shook  hands  with  him,  not  because  we  did 
not  know,  but  because  we  had  not  been 
ofificially  notified,  and  there  were  those 
present  who  knew  how  it  was  themselves. 
When  the  sheriff  arrived  Wilkins  had 
moved  on,  and  Jimville  organized  a  posse 
and  brought  him  back,  because  the  sheriff 
was  a  Jimville  man  and  we  had  to  stand 
by  him. 

I  said  we  had  the  church  fair  at  the 
Silver  Dollar.  We  had  most  things  there, 
(  dances,  town  meetings,  and  the  kineto- 
scope  exhibition  of  the  Passion  Play.  The 
Silver  Dollar  had  been  built  when  the 
borders  of  Jimville  spread  from  Minton  to 
the  red  hill  the  Defiance  twisted  through. 
"Side-Winder"  Smith  scrubbed  the  floor 
for  us  and  moved  the  bar  to  the  back  room. 
The  fair  was  designed  for  the  support  of 
ii6 


JIMVILLE 

the  circuit  rider  who  preached  to  the  few 
that  would  hear,  and  buried  us  all  in  turn. 
He  was  the  symbol  of  Jimville's  respecta- 
bility, although  he  was  of  a  sect  that  held 
dancing  among  the  cardinal  sins.  The 
management  took  no  chances  on  offending 
the  minister;  at  11.30  they  tendered  him 
the  receipts  of  the  evening  in  the  chair- 
man's hat,  as  a  delicate  intimation  that  the 
fair  was  closed.  The  company  filed  out  of 
the  front  door  and  around  to  the  back. 
Then  the  dance  began  formally  with  no 
feelings  hurt.  These  were  the  sort  of  cour- 
tesies, common  enough  in  Jimville,  that 
brought  tears  of  delicate  inner  laughter. 

There  were  others  besides  Mr.  Fanshawe 
who  had  walked  out  of  Mr.  Harte's  demesne 
to  Jimville  and  wore  names  that  smacked 
of  the  soil,  — "Alkah  Bill,"  "Pike"  Wil- 
son, "  Three  Finger,"  and  "  Mono  Jim  ;  " 
117 


JIMVILLE 

fierce,  shy,  profane,  sun-dried  derelicts  of 
the  windy  hills,  who  each  owned,  or  had 
owned,  a  mine  and  was  wishful  to  own  one 
again.  They  laid  up  on  the  worn  benches 
of  the  Silver  Dollar  or  the  Same  Old  Luck 
like  beached  vessels,  and  their  talk  ran  on 
endlessly  of  "  strike  "  and  "  contact "  and 
"  mother  lode,"  and  worked  around  to 
fights  and  hold-ups,  villainy,  haunts,  and 
the  hoodoo  of  the  Minietta,  told  austerely 
without  imagination. 

Do  not  suppose  I  am  going  to  repeat  it 
all ;  you  who  want  these  things  written  up 
from  the  point  of  view  of  people  who  do 
not  do  them  every  day  would  get  no  savor 
in  their  speech. 

Says  Three  Finger,  relating  the  history 
of  the  Mariposa,  "  I  took  it  off' n  Tom 
Beatty,  cheap,  after  his  brother  Bill  was 
shot." 

ii8 


JIMVILLE 

Says  Jim  Jenkins,  "  What  was  the  mat- 
ter of  him  ? " 

"  Who  ?  Bill  ?  Abe  Johnson  shot  him ; 
he  was  fooling  around  Johnson's  wife,  an' 
Tom  sold  me  the  mine  dirt  cheap." 

"  Why  did  n't  he  work  it  himself  ?  " 

"  Him  ?  Oh,  he  was  laying  for  Abe  and 
calculated  to  have  to  leave  the  country 
pretty  quick." 

"  Huh  !  "  says  Jim  Jenkins,  and  the  tale 
flows  smoothly  on. 

Yearly  the  spring  fret  floats  the  loose 
population  of  Jimville  out  into  the  desolate 
waste  hot  lands,  guiding  by  the  peaks  and 
a  few  rarely  touched  water-holes,  always, 
always  with  the  golden  hope.  They  de- 
velop prospects  and  grow  rich,  develop  oth- 
ers and  grow  poor  but  never  embittered. 
Say  the  hills.  It  is  all  one,  there  is  gold 
enough,  time  enough,  and  men  enough  to 
119 


JIMVILLE 

/'  come   after    you.     And    at    Jimville    they 
<^  understand  the  language  of  the  hills. 

Jimville  does  not  know  a  great  deal  about 
the  crust  of  the  earth,  it  prefers  a  "  hunch." 
That  is  an  intimation  from  the  gods  that 
if  you  go  over  a  brown  back  of  the  hills,  by 
a  dripping  spring,  up  Coso  way,  you  will 
find  what  is  worth  while.  I  have  never 
heard  that  the  failure  of  any  particular 
hunch  disproved  the  principle.  Somehow 
the  rawness  of  the  land  favors  the  sense 
of  personal  relation  to  the  supernatural. 
There  is  not  much  intervention  of  crops, 
cities,  clothes,  and  manners  between  you 
and  the  organizing  forces  to  cut  off  com- 
munication.    All  this  begets  in  Jimville  a 

-.state  that  passes  explanation  unless  you  will 
accept  an   explanation   that   passes  belief. 
Along  with  killing  and  drunkenness,  covet- 
ing of  women,  charity,  simplicity,  there   is 
1 20 


/ 


JIMVILLE 

a  certain  indifference,  blankness,  emptiness 
if  you  will,  of  all  vaporings,  no  bubbling  of 
the  pot,  —  it  wants  the  German  to  coin  a 
word  for  that,  —  no  bread-envy,  no  brother- 
fervor.  Western  writers  have  not  sensed 
it  yet ;  they  smack  the  savor  of  lawlessness 
too  much  upon  their  tongues,  but  you  have 
these  to  witness  it  is  not  mean-spiritedness. 
It  is  pure  Greek  in  that  it  represents  the 
courage  to  sheer  off  what  is  not  worth  while. 
Beyond  that  it  endures  without  sniveling, 
renounces  without  self-pity,  fears  no  death, 
rates  itself  not  too  great  in  the  scheme  of 
things  ;  so  do  beasts,  so  did  St.  Jerome  in 
the  desert,  so  also  in  the  elder  day  did  gods. 
Life,  its  performance,  cessation,  is  no  new 
thing  to  gape  and  wonder  at. 

Here  you  have  the  repose  of  the  per-  \^ 
fectly  accepted  instinct  which  includes  pas-  (^ 
sion  and  death  in  its  perquisites.    I  suppose    J) 

121  ^ 


JIMVILLE 

) 


that  the  end  of  all  our  hammering  and 
yawping  will  be  something  like  the  point 
of  view  of  Jimville.  The  only  difference 
will  be  in  the  decorations. 


MY    NEIGHBOR'S    FIELD 


MY    NEIGHBOR'S   FIELD 

IT  is  one  of  those  places  God  must  have 
meant  for  a  field  from  all  time,  lying 
very  level  at  the  foot  of  the  slope  that 
crowds  up  against  Kearsarge,  falling  slight- 
ly toward  the  town.  North  and  south  it 
is  fenced  by  low  old  glacial  ridges,  boulder 
strewn  and  untenable.  Eastward  it  butts 
on  orchard  closes  and  the  village  gardens, 
brimming  over  into  them  by  wild  brier  and 
creeping  grass.  The  village  street,  with  its 
double  row  of  unlike  houses,  breaks  off  ab- 
ruptly at  the  edge  of  the  field  in  a  foot- 
path that  goes  up  the  streamside,  beyond 
it,  to  the  source  of  waters. 

The  field  is  not  greatly  esteemed  of  the 
town,  not  being  put  to  the  plough  nor  af- 
fording firewood,  but  breeding  all  manner 
125 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 

of  wild  seeds  that  go  down  in  the  irrigating 
ditches  to  come  up  as  weeds  in  the  gar- 
dens and  grass  plots.  But  when  I  had  no 
more  than  seen  it  in  the  charm  of  its  spring 
smiling,  I  kriew  I  should  have  no  peace 
until  I  had  bought  ground  and  built  me  a 
house  beside  it,  with  a  little  wicket  to  go 
in  and  out  at  all  hours,  as  afterward  came 
about. 

Edswick,  Roeder,  Connor,  and  Ruffin 
owned  the  field  before  it  fell  to  my  neigh- 
bor. But  before  that  the  Paiutes,  mesne 
lords  of  the  soil,  made  a  campoodie  by  the 
rill  of  Pine  Creek  ;  and  after,  contesting  the 
soil  with  them,  cattle-men,  who  found  its 
foodful  pastures  greatly  to  their  advantage ; 
and  bands  of  blethering  flocks  shepherded 
by  wild,  hairy  men  of  little  speech,  who  at- 
tested their  rights  to  the  feeding  ground 
with  their  long  staves  upon  each  other's 
126 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 

skulls.  Edswick  homesteaded  the  field 
about  the  time  the  wild  tide  of  mining  life 
was  roaring  and  rioting  up  Kearsarge,  and 
where  the  village  now  stands  built  a  stone 
hut,  with  loopholes  to  make  good  his  claim 
ag^ainst  cattle-men  or  Indians.  But  Eds- 
wick  died  and  Roeder  became  master  of  the 
field.  Roeder  owned  cattle  on  a  thousand 
hills,  and  made  it  a  recruiting  ground  for 
his  bellowing  herds  before  beginning  the 
long  drive  to  market  across  a  shifty  desert. 
He  kept  the  field  fifteen  years,  and  after- 
ward falling  into  difficulties,  put  it  out  as 
security  against  certain  sums.  Connor, 
who  held  the  securities,  was  cleverer  than 
Roeder  and  not  so  busy.  The  money  fell 
due  the  winter  of  the  Big  Snow,  when  all 
the  trails  were  forty  feet  under  drifts,  and 
Roeder  was  away  in  San  Francisco  selling 
his  cattle.  At  the  set  time  Connor  took 
127 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 


the  law  by  the  forelock  and  was  adjudged 
(possession  of  the  field.  Eighteen  days 
I  later  Roeder  arrived  on  snowshoes,  both 
/feet  frozen,  and  the  money  in  his  pack. 
I  In  the  long  suit  at  law  ensuing,  the  field 
fell  to  Ruffin,  that  clever  one-armed  lawyer 
with  the  tongue  to  wile  a  bird  out  of  the 
bush,  Connor's  counsel,  and  was  sold  by 
him  to  my  neighbor,  whom  from  envying 
his  possession  I  call  Naboth. 

Curiously,  all  this  human  occupancy  of 
greed  and  mischief  left  no  mark  on  the 
field,  but  the  Indians  did,  and  the  unthink- 
ing sheep.  Round  its  corners  children 
pick  up  chipped  arrow  points  of  obsidian, 
scattered  through  it  are  kitchen  middens 
and  pits  of  old  sweat  -  houses.  By  the 
south  corner,  where  the  campoodie  stood, 
is  a  single  shrub  of  "hoopee"  {Lycium  An- 
dersonii),  maintaining  itself  hardly  among 
128  ~ 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 

alien  shrubs,  and  near  by,  three  low  rakish 
trees  of  hackberry,  so  far  from  home  that 
no  prying  of  mine  has  been  able  to  find  an- 
other in  any  canon  east  or  west.  But  the 
berries  of  both  were  food  for  the  Paiutes, 
eagerly  sought  and  traded  for  as  far  south 
as  Shoshone  Land.  By  the  fork  of  the 
creek  where  the  shepherds  camp  is  a  single 
clump  of  mesquite  of  the  variety  called 
"  screw  bean."  The  seed  must  have  shaken 
there  from  some  sheep's  coat,  for  this  is 
not  the  habitat  of  mesquite,  and  except  for 
other  single  shrubs  at  sheep  camps,  none 
grows  freely  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
south  or  east. 

Naboth  has  put  a  fence  about  the  best 
of  the  field,  but  neither  the  Indians  nor 
the  shepherds  can  quite  forego  it.  They 
make  camp  and  build  their  wattled  huts 
about  the  borders  of  it,  and  no  doubt  they 
129 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 

have  some  sense  of  home   in  its  familiar 
aspect. 

As  I  have  said,  it  is  a  low-lying  field, 
between  the  mesa  and  the  town,  with  no 
hillocks  in  it,  but  a  gentle  swale  where 
the  waste  water  of  the  creek'^oesjx)wn_to 
cejtain_Jarms,  and  the  hackberry4reeSj_of^ 
which  the  tallest  miorht  be  three  times  the 
height  of  a  man,  are  the  talleat-things  in 
it.  A  mile  up  from  the  water^ate_that 
turns  the  creek  into  supply  pipes  for  the 
town,  begins  a  row  of  long-leaved  pines, 
threading  the  watercourse  to  the  foot  of 
Kearsarge.  These  are  the  pines  that  puz- 
zle the  local  botanist,  not  easily  determined, 
and  unrelated  to  other  conifers  of  the  Si- 
erra slope ;  the  same  pines  of  which  the 
Indians  relate  a  legend  mixed  of  brother- 
liness  and  the  retribution  of  God.  Once 
the  pines  possessed  the  field,  as  the  worn 
130 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 

Stumps  of  them  along  the  streamsidjeshaw, 
and  it  would  seem  their  secret  purpose 
to  regain  their  old  footing.  Now  and 
then  some  seedling  escapes  the  devastating 
sheep  a  rod  or  two  down-stream.  Since  I 
came  to  live  by  the  field  one  of  these  has 
tiptoed  above  the  gully  of  the  creek,  beck- 
oning the  procession  from  the  hills,  as  if 
in  fact  they  would  make  back  toward  that 
skyward-pointing  finger  of  granite  on  the 
opposite  range,  from  which,  according  to 
the  legend,  when  they  were  bad  Indians 
and  it  a  great  chief,  they  ran  away.  This 
year  the  summer  floods  brought  the  round, 
brown,  fruitful  cones  to  my  very  door,  and  . 
I  look,  if  I  live  long  enough,  to  see  them 
come  up  greenly  in  my  neighbor's  field. 

It  is  interesting  to  watch  this  retaking/ 
of  old  ground  by  the  wild  plants,  banished  y 
by  human  use.     Since   Naboth  drew  his' 
131 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 

fence  about  the  field  and  restricted  it  to  a 
few  wild-eyed  steers,  halting  between  the 
hills  and  the  shambles,  many  old  habitues 
of  the  field  have  come  back  to  their  haunts. 
The  willow  and  brown  birch,  long  ago  cut 
off  by  the  Indians  for  wattles,  have  come 
back  to  the  streamside,  slender  and  vir- 
ginal in  their  spring  greenness^-and  leaving 
long  stretches  of  the  brown  water  open  to 
the  sky.  In  stony  places  where  no  grass 
grows,  wild  olives  sprawl ;  close-twigged, 
blue-gray  patches  in  winter,  more  translu- 
cent greenish  gold  in  spring  than  any 
aureole.  Along  with  willow  and  birch  and 
brier,  the  clematis,  that  shyest  plant  of 
water  borders,  slips  down  season  by  season 
to  within  a  hundred  yards  of  the  village 
street.  Convinced  after  three  years  that 
it  would  come  no  nearer,  we  spent  time 
fruitlessly  pulling  up  roots  to  plant  in  the 
132 


MY    NEIGHBOR  S    FIELD 

garden.  All  this  while,  when  no  coaxing 
or  care  prevailed  upon  any  transplanted 
slip  to  grow,  one  was  coming  up  silently 
outside  the  fence  near  the  wicket,  coiling 
so  secretly  in  the  rabbit-brush  that  its  pre- 
sence was  never  suspected  until  it  flowered 
delicately  along  its  twining  length.  The 
horehound  comes  through  the  fence  and 
under  it,  shouldering  the  pickets  off  the 
railings ;  the  brier  rose  mines  under  the 
horehound ;  and  no  care,  though  I  own  I 
am  not  a  close  weeder,  keeps  the  small 
pale  moons  of  the  primrose  from  rising  to 
the  night  moth  under  my  apple-trees.  The 
first  summer  in  the  new  place,  a^  clump  of 
cypripediums  came  up  by  the  irrigating 
ditch  at  the  bottom  of  the  lawn.  But  the 
clematis  will  not  come  inside,  nor  the  wild 
almond. 

I   have  forgotten   to  find  out,  though  I 
133 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 

'meant  to,  whether  the  wild  almond  grew 
in  that  country  where  Moses  kept  the 
flocks  of  his  father-in-law,  but  if  so  one  can 
account  for  the  burning  bush.  It  comes 
upon  one  with  a  flame-burst  as  of  revela- 
tion ;  little  hard  red  buds  on  leafless  twigs, 
swelling  unnoticeably,  then  one,  two,  or 
three  strong  suns,  and  from  tip  to  tip  one 
soft  fiery  glow,  whispering  with  bees  as  a 
singing  flame.  A  twig  of  finger  size  will 
be  furred  to  the  thickness  of  one's  wrist 
by  pink  five-petaled  bloom,  so  close  that 
only  the  blunt-faced  wild  bees  find  their 
way  in  it.  In  this  latitude  late  frosts  cut 
off  the  hope  of  fruit  too  often  for  the  wild 
almond  to  multiply  greatly,  but  the  spiny, 
tap-rooted  shrubs  are  resistant  to  most 
plant  evils. 

It  is  not  easy  always  to  be  attentive  to 
the  maturing  of  wild  fruit.     Plants  are  so 
134 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 

unobtrusive  in  their  material  processes,  and 
always  at  the  significant  moment  some 
other  bloom  has  reached  its  perfect  hour. 
One  can  never  fix  the  precise  moment 
when  the  rosy  tint  the  field  has  from  the 
wild  almond  passes  into  the  inspiring  blue 
of  lupines.  One  notices  here  and  there  a' 
spike  of  bloom,  and  a  day  later  the  whole 
field  royal  and  ruffling  lightly  to  the  wind. 
Part  of  the  charm  of  the  lupine  is  the  con- 
tinual stir  of  its  plumes  to  airs  not  sus- 
pected otherwhere.  Go  and  stand  by  any 
crown  of  bloom  and  the  tall  stalks  do  but 
rock  a  little  as  for  drowsiness,  but  look  off 
across  the  field,  and  on  the  stillest  days 
there  is  always  a  trepidation  in  the  purple 
patches. 

From  midsummer  until   frost    the  pre- 
vailing note  of  the  field  is  clear  gold,  pass- 
ing into  the  rusty  tone  of  bigelovia  going 
135 


.'^c*'" 


MY    NEIGHBOR  S    FIELD 

into  a  decline,  a  succession  of  color 
schemes  more  admirably  managed  than 
the  transformation  scene  at  the  theatre. 
Under  my  window  a  colony  of  cleome 
made  a  soft  web  of  bloom  that  drew  me 
every  morning  for  a  long  still  time ;  and 
one  day  I  discovered  that  I  was  looking 
into  a  rare  fretwork  of  fawn  and  straw  col- 
ored twigs  from  which  both  bloom  and 
leaf  had  gone,  and  I  could  not  say  if  it  had 
been  for  a  matter  of  weeks  or  days.  The 
time  to  plant  cucumbers  and  set  out  cab- 
bages may  be  set  down  in  the  almanac, 
but  never  seed-time  nor  blossom  in  Na- 
both's  field. 

Certain  winged  and  mailed  denizens  of 
the  field  seem  to  reach  their  heyday  along 
with  the  plants  they  most  affect.  In  June 
the  leaning  towers  of  the  white  milkweed 
are  jeweled  over  with  red  and  gold  beetles, 
136 


V 


MY    NEIGHBOR  S    FIELD 

climbing  dizzily.  This  is  that  milkweed 
from  whose  stems  the  Indians  flayed  fibre 
to  make  snares  for  small  game,  but  what 
use  the  beetles  put  it  to  except  for  a  dis- 
playing ground  for  their  gay  coats,  I  could 
never  discover.  The  white  butterfly  crop 
comes  on  with  the  bigelovia  bloom,  and  on 
warm  mornings  makes  an  airy  twinkling 
all  across  the  field.  In  September  young 
linnets  grow  out  of  the  rabbit-brush  in  the 
night.  All  the  nests  discoverable  in  the 
neighboring  orchards  will  not  account  for 
the  numbers  of  them.  Somewhere,  by  the 
same  secret  process  by  which  the  field 
matures  a  million  more  seeds  than  it 
needs,  it  is  maturing  red-hooded  linnets 
for  their  devouring.  All  the  purlieus  of 
bigelovia  and  artemisia  are  noisy  with 
them  for  a  month.  Suddenly  as  they  come 
as  suddenly  go  the  fly-by-nights,  that  pitch 
137 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 

and  toss  on  dusky  barred  wings  above  the 
field  of  summer  twilights.  Never  one  of 
these  nighthawks  will  you  see  after  linnet 
time,  though  the  hurtle  of  their  wings 
makes  a  pleasant  sound  across  the  dusk  in 
their  season. 

For  two  summers  a  great  red-tailed 
hawk  has  visited  the  field  every  afternoon 
between  three  and  four  o'clock,  swooping 
jand  soaring  with  the  airs  of  a  gentleman 
adventurer.  What  he  finds  there  is  chiefly 
conjectured,  so  secretive  are  the  little  peo- 
ple of  Naboth's  field.  Only  when  leaves 
fall  and  the  light  is  low  and  slant,  one  sees 
the  long  clean  flanks  of  the  jackrabbits, 
leaping  like  small  deer,  and  of  late  after- 
noons little  cotton-tails  scamper  in  the 
runways.  But  the  most  one  sees  of  the 
borrowers,  gophers,  and  mice  is  the  fresh 
earthwork  of  their  newly  opened  doors,  or 
138 


MY    NEIGHBORS    FIELD 


the  pitiful  small   shreds   the   butcher-bird 
hangs  on  spiny  shrubs. 

It  is  a  still  field,  this  of  my  neighbor's, 
though  so  busy,  and  admirably  com- 
pounded for  variety  and  pleasantness,  — 
a  little  sand,  a  little  loam,  a  grassy  plot,  a 
stony  rise  or  two,  a  full  brown  stream,  a 
little  touch  of  humanness,  a  footpath  trod- 
den out  by  moccasins.  Naboth  expects  to 
make  town  lots  of  it  and  his  fortune  in 
one  and  the  same  day ;  but  when  I  take 
the  trail  to  talk  with  old  Seyavi  at  the 
campoodie,  it  occurs  to  me  that  though 
the  field  may  serve  a  good  turn  in  those 
days  it  will  hardly  be  happier.  No,  cer- 
tainly  not  happier. 


THE   MESA    TRAIL 


THE  MESA  TRAIL 

THE  mesa  trail  begins  in  the  cam- 
poodie  at  the  corner  of  Naboth's  field, 
though  one  may  drop  into  it  from  the  wood 
road  toward  the  canon,  or  from  any  of  the 
cattle  paths  that  go  up  along  the  stream- 
side  ;  a  clean,  pale,  smooth  -  trodden  way 
between  spiny  shrubs,  comfortably  wide 
for  a  horse  or  an  Indian.  It  begins,  I  say, 
at  the  campoodie,  and  goes  on  toward  the 
twilight  hills  and  the  borders  of  Shoshone 
Land.  It  strikes  diagonally  across  the  foot 
of  the  hill -slope  from  the  field  until  it 
reaches  the  larkspur  level,  and  holds  south, 
along  the  front  of  Oppapago,  having  the 
high  ranges  to  the  right  and  the  foothills 
and  the  great  Bitter  Lake  below  it  on  the 
left.  The  mesa  holds  very  level  here,  cut 
143 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 


across  at  intervals  by  the  deep  washes  of 
dwindling  streams,  and  its  treeless  spaces 
uncramp  the  soul. 

Mesa  trails  were  meant  to  be  traveled 
/on   horseback,  at  the  jigging  coyote  trot 
(     that   only  western-bred   horses  learn  suc- 
'  cessfully.      A    foot-pace   carries    one   too 
slowly    past    the     units    in    a   decorative 
scheme  that  is  on  a  scale  with  the  country 
round   for   bigness.     It  takes  days'   jour- 
neys   to   give    a    note    of    variety    to    the 
country  of  the  social  shrubs.   These  chiefly 
clothe  the  benches  and  eastern  foot-slopes 
of  the  Sierras, — great  spreads  of  artemisia, 
coleogyne,  and  spinosa,  suffering  no  other 
woody  stemmed  thing  in  their   purlieus ; 
this   by   election    apparently,  with    no    el- 
bowing ;  and  the  several  shrubs  have  each 
their  clientele  of  flowering  herbs.    It  would 
be  worth  knowing  how  much  the  devastat- 
144 


'\ 


-^^^M^^i^M^&^IIM^-^^-^^^^^Z^^^^ 


'i»vjit-  '-^-'^mJ.- 


i 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 


ing  sheep  have  had  to  do  with  driving  the 
tender  plants  to  the  shelter  of  the  prickle- 
bushes.  It  might  have  begun  earlier,  in 
the  time  Seyavi  of  the  campoodie  tells  of, 
when  antelope  ran  on  the  mesa  like  sheep 
for  numbers,  but  scarcely  any  foot-high 
herb  rears  itself  except  from  the  midst  of 
some  stout  twigged  shrub ;  larkspur  in  the 
coleogyne,  and  for  every  spinosa  the  pur- 
pling coils  of  phacelia.  In  the  shrub  shel- 
ter, in  the  season,  flock  the  little  stemless 
things  whose  blossom  time  is  as  short  as  a 
marriage  song.  The  larkspurs  make  the 
best  showing,  being  tall  and  sweet,  sway- 
ing a  little  above  the  shrubbery,  scattering 
pollen  dust  which  Navajo  brides  gather  to 
fill  their  marriage  baskets.  This  were  an 
easier  task  than  to  find  two  of  them  of  a 
shade.  Larkspurs  in  the  botany  are  blue, 
but  if  you  were  to  slip  rein  to  the  stub  of 
145 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

some  black  sage  and  set  about  proving  it 
you  would  be  still  at  it  by  the  hour  when 
the  white  gilias  set  their  pale  disks  to  the 
westering  sun.     This  is  the  gilia  the  chil- 


dren call 


and  it  is  no  use 


evening  snow, 
trying  to  improve  on  children's  names  for 
wild  flowers. 

From  the  height  of  a  horse  you  look 
down  to  clean  spaces  in  a  shifty  yellow 
soil,  bare  to  the  eye  as  a  newly  sanded 
floor.  Then  as  soon  as  ever  the  hill  shad- 
ows begin  to  swell  out  from  the  sidelong 
ranges,  come  little  flakes  of  whiteness  flut- 
tering at  the  edge  of  the  sand.  By  dusk 
there  are  tiny  drifts  in  the  lee  of  every 
strong  shrub,  rosy-tipped  corollas  as  riot- 
ous in  the  sliding  mesa  wind  as  if  they 
were  real  flakes  shaken  out  of  a  cloud,  not 
sprung  from  the  ground  on  wiry  three- 
inch  stems.  They  keep  awake  all  night, 
146 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

and  all  the  air  is  heavy  and  musky  sweet 
because  of  them. 

Farther  south  on  the  trail  there  will  be 
poppies  meeting  ankle  deep,  and  singly, 
peacock-painted  bubbles  of  calochortus 
blown  out  at  the  tops  of  tall  stems.  But 
before  the  season  is  in  tune  for  the  gayer 
blossoms  the  best  display  of  color  is  in  the 
lupin  wash.  There  is  always  a  lupin  wash 
somewhere  on  a  mesa  trail,  —  a  broad,  shal- 
low, cobble-paved  sink  of  vanished  waters, 
where  the  hummocks  of  Lupimcs  ornatus 
run  a  delicate  gamut  from  silvery  green  of 
spring  to  silvery  white  of  winter  foliage. 
They  look  in  fullest  leaf,  except  for  color, 
most  like  the  huddled  huts  of  the  cam- 
poodie,  and  the  largest  of  them  might  be  a 
man's  length  in  diameter.  In  their  season, 
which  is  after  the  gilias  are  at  their  best, 
and  before  the  larkspurs  are  ripe  for  pollen 
147 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

gathering,  every  terminal  whorl  of  the 
lupin  sends  up  its  blossom  stalk,  not  hold- 
ing any  constant  blue,  but  paling  and 
purpling  to  guide  the  friendly  bee  to  vir- 
ginal honey  sips,  or  away  from  the  per- 
fected and  depleted  flower.  The  length  of 
the  blossom  stalk  conforms  to  the  rounded 
contour  of  the  plant,  and  of  these  there 
will  be  a  million  moving  indescribably  in 
the  airy  current  that  flows  down  the  swale 
of  the  wash. 

There  is  always  a  little  wind  on  the 
mesa,  a  sliding  current  of  cooler  air  going 
down  the  face  of  the  mountain  of  its  own 
momentum,  but  not  to  disturb  the  silence 
of  great  space.  Passing  the  wide  mouths  of 
cafions,  one  gets  the  effect  of  whatever  is 
doing  in  them,  openly  or  behind  a  screen  of 
cloud,  —  thunder  of  falls,  wind  in  the  pine 
leaves,  or  rush  and  roar  of  rain.  The  rumor 
148 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

of  tumult  grows  and  dies  in  passing,  as 
from  open  doors  gaping  on  a  village  street, 
but  does  not  impinge  on  the  effect  of  soli- 
tariness. In  quiet  weather  mesa  days  have 
no  parallel  for  stillness,  but  the  night  silence 
breaks  into  certain  mellow  or  poignant 
notes.  Late  afternoons  the  burrowing  owls 
may  be  seen  blinking  at  the  doors  of  their 
hummocks  with  perhaps  four  or  five  elf- 
ish nestlings  arow,  and  by  twilight  begin  a 
soft  whoo-oo-ing,  rounder,  sweeter,  more  in- 
cessant in  mating  time.  It  is  not  possible 
to  disassociate  the  call  of  the  burrowing 
owl  from  the  late  slant  light  of  the  mesa. 
If  the  fine  vibrations  which  are  the  golden- 
violet  glow  of  spring  twilights  were  to 
tremble  into  sound,  it  would  be  just  that 
mellow  double  note  breaking  along  the 
blossom-tops.  While  the  glow  holds  one 
sees  the  thistle-down  flights  and  pouncings 
149 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

after  jDrey,  and  on  into  the  dark  hears  their 
soi\.  pus-ssh  !  clearing  out  of  the  trail  ahead. 
Maybe  the  pin-point  shriek  of  field  mouse 
or  kangaroo  rat  that  pricks  the  wakeful 
pauses  of  the  night  is  extorted  by  these 
mellow-voiced  plunderers,  though  it  is  just 
as  like  to  be  the  work  of  the  red  fox  on  his 
twenty-mile  constitutional. 

Both  the  red  fox  and  the  coyote  are  free 
of  the  night  hours,  and  both  killers  for  the 
pure  love  of  slaughter.  The  fox  is  no  great 
talker,  but  the  coyote  goes  garrulously 
through  the  dark  in  twenty  keys  at  once, 
gossip,  warning,  and  abuse.  They  are  light 
treaders,  the  split-feet,  so  that  the  solitary 
camper  sees  their  eyes  about  him  in  the 
dark  sometimes,  and  hears  the  soft  intake 
of  breath  when  no  leaf  has  stirred  and  no 
twig  snapped  underfoot.  The  coyote  is 
your  real  lord  of  the  mesa,  and  so  he  makes 
150 


I 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 


sure  you  are  armed  with  no  long  black  in- 
strument to  spit  your  teeth  into  his  vitals  at 
a  thousand  yards,  is  both  bold  and  curious. 
Not  so  bold,  however,  as  the  badger  and 
not  so  much  of  a  curmudgeon.  This  short- 
legged  meat-eater  loves  half  lights  and 
lowering  days,  has  no  friends,  no  enemies, 
and  disowns  his  offspring.  Very  likely  if 
he  knew  how  hawk  and  crow  dog  him  for 
dinners,  he  would  resent  it.  But  the  badger 
is  not  very  well  contrived  for  looking  up 
or  far  to  either  side.  Dull  afternoons  he 
may  be  met  nosing  a  trail  hot-foot  to  the 
home  of  ground  rat  or  squirrel,  and  is  with 
difficulty  persuaded  to  give  the  right  of 
way.  The  badger  is  a  pot-hunter  and  no 
sportsman.  Once  at  the  hill,  he  dives  for 
the  central  chamber,  his  sharp-clawed, 
splayey  feet  splashing  up  the  sand  like  a 
bather  in  the  surf.  He  is  a  swift  trailer, 
151 


i/U 


i 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

but  not  SO  swift  or  secretive  but  some  small 
sailing  hawk  or  lazy  crow,  perhaps  one  or 
two  of  each,  has  spied  upon  him  and  come 
drifting  down  the  wind  to  the  killing. 

No  burrower  is  so  unwise  as  not  to  have 
several  exits  from  his  dwelling  under  pro- 
tecting shrubs.  When  the  badger  goes 
down,  as  many  of  the  furry  people  as  are 
not  caught  napping  come  up  by  the  back 
doors,  and  the  hawks  make  short  work  of 
them.  I  suspect  that  the  crows  get  no- 
thing but  the  gratification  of  curiosity  and 
the  pickings  of  some  secret  store  of  seeds 
unearthed  by  the  badger.  Once  the  ex- 
cavation begins  they  walk  about  expec- 
tantly, but  the  little  gray  hawks  beat  slow 
circles  about  the  doors  of  exit,  and  are 
wiser  in  their  generation,  though  they  do 
not  look  it. 

There  are  always  solitary  hawks  sailing 
152 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

above  the  mesa,  and  where  some  blue  tower 
of  silence  lifts  out  of  the  neighboring  range, 
an  eagle  hanging  dizzily,  and  always  buz- 
zards high  up  in  the  thin,  translucent  air 
making  a  merry-go-round.  Between  the 
coyote  and  the  birds  of  carrion  the  mesa  is 
kept  clear  of  miserable  dead. 

The  wind,  too,  is  a  besom  over  the  tree- 
less spaces,  whisking  new  sand  over  the  lit- 
ter of  the  scant-leaved  shrubs,  and  the  little 
doorways  of  the  burrowers  are  as  trim  as 
city  fronts.  It  takes  man  to  leave  unsightly 
scars  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  Here  on 
the  mesa  the  abandoned  campoodies  of  the 
Paiutes  are  spots  of  desolation  long  after 
the  wattles  of  the  huts  have  warped  in  the 
brush  heaps.  The  campoodies  are  near 
the  watercourses,  but  never  in  the  swale 
of  the  stream.  The  Paiute  seeks  rising 
ground,  depending  on  air  and  sun  for  puri- 
153 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

fication  of  his  dwelling,  and  when  it  be> 
comes  wholly  untenable,  moves. 

A  campoodie  at  noontime,  when  there 
is  no  smoke  rising  and  no  stir  of  life,  re- 
sembles nothing  so  much  as  a  collection 
of  prodigious  wasps'  nests.  The  huts  are 
squat  and  brown  and  chimneyless,  facing 
east,  and  the  inhabitants  have  the  faculty 
of  quail  for  making  themselves  scarce  in 
the  underbrush  at  the  approach  of  stran- 
gers. But  they  are  really  not  often  at 
home  during  midday,  only  the  blind  and 
incompetent  left  to  keep  the  camp.  These 
are  working  hours,  and  all  across  the  mesa 
one  sees  the  women  whisking  seeds  of  chia 
into  their  spoon-shaped  baskets,  these  emp- 
tied again  into  the  huge  conical  carriers, 
supported  on  the  shoulders  by  a  leather 
band  about  the  forehead. 

Mornings  and  late  afternoons  one  meets 
154 


I 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

the  men  singly  and  afoot  on  unguessable  er- 
rands, or  riding  shaggy,  browbeaten  ponies, 
with  game  slung  across  the  saddle-bows. 
This  might  be  deer  or  even  antelope,  rab- 
bits, or,  very  far  south  towards  Shoshone 
Land,  lizards. 

There  are  myriads  of  lizards  on  the  mesa, 
little  gray  darts,  or  larger  salmon-sided  ones 
that  may  be  found  swallowing  their  skins  in 
the  safety  of  a  prickle-bush  in  early  spring. 
Now  and  then  a  palm's  breadth  of  the  trail 
gathers  itself  together  and  scurries  off  with 
a  little  rustle  under  the  brush,  to  resolve 
itself  into  sand  again.  This  is  pure  witch- 
craft. If  you  succeed  in  catching  it  in 
transit,  it  loses  its  power  and  becomes  a 
flat,  horned,  toad-like  creature,  horrid  look- 
ing and  harmless,  of  the  color  of  the  soil ; 
and  the  curio  dealer  will  give  you  two  bits 
for  it,  to  stuff. 

155 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

Men  have  their  season  on  the  mesa  as 
much  as  plants  and  four-footed  things,  and 
one  is  not  like  to  meet  them  out  of  their 
time.     For  example,  at  the  time  of  rodeos, 
which  is  perhaps  April,  one  meets  free  rid- 
ing vaqueros  who  need  no  trails  and  can 
find  cattle  where  to  the  layman  no  cattle 
exist.    As  early  as  February  bands  of  sheep 
work   up  from  the  south  to  the  high   Si- 
erra pastures.     It  appears  that  shepherds 
have  not  changed  more  than  sheep  in  the 
)  process  of  time.     The  shy  hairy  men  who 
/  herd  the  tractile  flocks   might  be,  except 
^or  some  added  clothing,  the  very  brethren 
/of   David.      Of  necessity  they  are   hardy, 
/  simple  livers,  superstitious,  fearful,  given  to 
I    seeing  visions,  and  almost  without  speech. 
I    It  needs  the  bustle  of  shearings  and  copi- 
ous libations    of   sour,   weak  wine    to   re- 
store the  human  faculty.    Petite  Pete,  who 
156 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

works  a  circuit  up  from  the  Ceriso  to  Red 
Butte  and  around  by  way  of  Salt  Flats, 
passes  year  by  year  on  the  mesa  trail, 
his  thick  hairy  chest  thrown  open  to  all 
weathers,  twirling  his  long  staff,  and  deal- 
ing brotherly  with  his  dogs,  who  are  pos- 
sibly as  intelligent,  certainly  handsomer. 

A  flock  s  journey  is  seven  miles,  ten  if 
pasture  fails,  in  a  windless  blur  of  dust, 
feeding  as  it  goes,  and  resting  at  noons. 
Such  hours  Pete  weaves  a  little  screen  of 
twigs  between  his  head  and  the  sun  —  the 
rest  of  him  is  as  impervious  as  one  of  his 
own  sheep  —  and  sleeps  while  his  dogs 
have  the  flocks  upon  their  consciences.  At 
night,  wherever  he  may  be,  there  Pete 
camps,  and  fortunate  the  trail-weary  trav- 
eler who  falls  in  with  him.  When  the 
fire  kindles  and  savory  meat  seethes  in  the 
pot,  when  there  is  a  drowsy  blether  from 
157 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

the  flock,  and  far  down  the  mesa  the  twl- 
hght  twinkle  of  shepherd  fires,  when  there 
is  a  hint  of  blossom  underfoot  and  a  hea- 
venly whiteness  on  the  hills,  one  harks  back 
without  effort  to  Judaea  and  the  Nativity. 
But  one  feels  by  day  anything  but  good 
will  to  note  the  shorn  shrubs  and  cropped 
blossom-tops.  So  many  seasons'  effort,  so 
many  suns  and  rains  to  make  a  pound  of 
wool !  And  then  there  is  the  loss  of 
ground-inhabiting  birds  that  must  fail  from 
the  mesa  when  few  herbs  ripen  seed. 

Out  West,  the  west  of  the  mesas  and 
the  unpatented  hills,  there  is  more  sky 
than  any  place  in  the  world.  It  does  not 
sit  flatly  on  the  rim  of  earth,  but  begins 
somewhere  out  in  the  space  in  which  the 
earth  is  poised,  hollows  more,  and  is  full 
of  clean  winey  winds.  There  are  some 
odors,  too,  that  get  into  the  blood.  There 
158 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 

is  the  spring  smell  of  sage  that  is  the 
warning  that  sap  is  beginning  to  work  in 
a  soil  that  looks  to  have  none  of  the  juices 
of  life  in  it ;  it  is  the  sort  of  smell  that 
sets  one  thinking  what  a  long  furrow  the 
plough  would  turn  up  here,  the  sort  of 
smell  that  is  the  beginning  of  new  leafage, 
is  best  at  the  plant's  best,  and  leaves  a  pun- 
gent trail  where  wild  cattle  crop.  There  is 
the  smell  of  sage  at  sundown,  burning  sage 
from  campoodies  and  sheep  camps,  that 
travels  on  the  thin  blue  wraiths  of  smoke; 
the  kind  of  smell  that  gets  into  the  hair 
and  garments,  is  not  much  liked  except 
upon  long  acquaintance,  and  every  Paiute 
and  shepherd  smells  of  it  indubitably. 
There  is  the  palpable  smell  of  the  bitter 
dust  that  comes  up  from  the  alkali  flats  at 
the  end  of  the  dry  seasons,  and  the  smell 
of  rain  from  the  wide-mouthed  cafions. 
159 


THE    MESA    TRAIL 


And  last  the  smell  of  the  salt  grass  coun- 
try, which  is  the  beginning  of  other  things 
that  are  the  end  of  the  mesa  trail. 


THE    BASKET   MAKER 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

A  MAN,"  says  Seyavi  of  the  campoodie,      vV 
"  must  have  a  woman,  but  a  woman  ^  > 
who  has  a  child  will  do  very  well." 

That  was^  perhaps  why,  when  she  lost 
her  mate  in  the  dying  struggle  of  his  race, 
she  never  took  another,  but  set  her  wit  to 
fend  for  herself  and  her  young  son.  No 
doubt  she  was  often  put  to  it  in  the  begin- 
ning to  find  food  for  them  both.  The 
Paiutes  had  made  their  last  stand  at  the 
border  of  the  Bitter  Lake ;  battle-driven 
they  died  in  its  waters,  and  the  land  filled 
with  cattle-men  and  adventurers  for  gold  : 
this  while  Seyavi  and  the  boy  lay  up  in 
the  caverns  of  the  Black  Rock  and  ate  tule 
roots  and  fresh-water  clams  that  they  dug 
out  of  the  slough  bottoms  with  their  toes. 
163 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

In  the  interim,  while  the  tribes  swallowed 
their  defeat,  and  before  the  rumor  of  war 
died  out,  they  must  have  come  very  near 
to  the  bare  core  of  things.  That  was  the 
time  Seyavi  learned  the  sufficiency  of 
mother  wit,  and  how  much  more  easily  one 
can  do  without  a  man  than  might  at  first 
be  supposed. 

To  understand  the  fashion  of  any  life, 
one  must  know  the  land  it  is  lived  in  and 
the  procession  of  the  year.  This  valley  is 
a  narrow  one,  a  mere  trough  between  hills, 
a  draught  for  storms,  hardly  a  crow's  flight 
from  the  sharp  Sierras  of  the  Snows  to  the 
curled,  red  and  ochre,  uncomforted,  bare 
ribs  of  Waban.  Midway  of  the  groove  runs 
a  burrowing,  dull  river,  nearly  a  hundred 
miles  from  where  it  cuts  the  lava  flats  of 
the  north  to  its  widening  in  a  thick,  tide- 
less  pool  of  a  lake.  Hereabouts  the  ranges 
164 


— ^  THE    BASKET    MAKER 

have  no  foothills,  but  rise  up  steeply  from 
the  bench  lands  above  the  river.  Down 
from  the  Sierras,  for  the  east  ranges  have 
almost  no  rain,  pour  glancing  white  floods 
toward  the  lowest  land,  and  all  beside  them 
lie  the  campoodies,  brown  wattled  brush 
heaps,  looking  east. 

In  the  river  are  mussels,  and  reeds  that 
have  edible  white  roots,  and  in  the  soddy  \ 
meadows  tubers  of  joint  grass  ;  all  these  at/ 
their  best  in  the  spring.     On  the  slope  th6\ 
summer  growth  affords  seeds  ;  up  the  steep  ] 
the   one-leafed  pines,  an   oily  nut.      That 
was  really  all  they  could  depend  upon,  and 
that  only  at  the  mercy  of  the  little  gods  of 
frost  and  rain.     For  the  rest  it  was  cunning 
against    cunning,    caution    against    skill, 
against  quacking  hordes  of  wild-fowl  in  the 
tulares,  against  pronghorn  and  bighorn  and 
deer.     You  can  guess,   however,   that  all 
165 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 


this  warring  of  rifles  and  bowstrings,  this 
influx  of  overlording  whites,  had  made 
game  wilder  and  hunters  fearful  of  being 
hunted.  You  can  surmise  also,  for  it  was 
a  crude  time  and  the  land  was  raw,  that  the 
women  became  in  turn  the  game  of  the 
conquerors. 

There  used  to  be  in  the  Little  Antelope 
a  she  dog,  stray  or  outcast,  that  had  a  lit- 
ter in  some  forsaken  lair,  and  ranged  and 
foraged  for  them,  slinking  savage  and 
afraid,  remembering  and  mistrusting  hu- 
mankind, wistful,  lean,  and  sufBcient  for 
her  young.  I  have  thought  Seyavi  might 
have  had  days  like  that,  and  have  had  per- 
fect leave  to  think,  since  she  will  not  talk 
of  it.  Paiutes  have  the  art  of  reducing 
life  to  its  lowest  ebb  and  yet  saving  it  alive 
on  grasshoppers,  lizards,  and  strange  herbs; 
and  that  time  must  have  left  no  shift  un- 
i66 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

tried.  It  lasted  long  enough  for  Seyavi  to 
have  evolved  the  philosophy  of  life  which 
I  have_^et  down  at  the  beginning.  She 
had  gone  beyond  learning  to  do  for  her  son, 
and  learned  to  believe  it  worth  while. 

In  our  kind  of  society,  when  a  woman 
ceases  to  alter  the  fashion  of  her  hair,  you 
guess  that  she  has  passed  the  crisis  of  her 
experience.  If  she  goes  on  crimping  and 
uncrimping  with  the  changing  mode,  it  is 
safe  to  suppose  she  has  never  come  up 
against  anything  too  big  for  her.  The  In- 
_dian  woman  gets  nearly  the  same  personal 
note  in  the  pattern  of  her  baskets.  Not 
that  she  does  not  make  all  kinds,  carriers, 
water  -  bottles,  and  cradles,  —  these  are 
kitchen  ware,  —  but  her  works  of  art  are 
all  of  the  same  piece.  Seyavi  made  flaring, 
flat-bottomed  bowls,  cooking  pots  really, 
when  cooking  was  done  by  dropping  hot 
167 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

stones  into  water-tight  food  baskets,  and 
for  decoration  a  design  in  colored  bark  of 
the  procession  of  plumed  crests  of  the  valley 
quail.  In  this  pattern  she  had  made  cook- 
ing pots  in  the  golden  spring  of  her  wed- 
ding year,  when  the  quail  went  up  two  and 
two  to  their  resting  places  about  the  foot 
of  Oppapago.  In  this  fashion  she  made 
them  when,  after  pillage,  it  was  possible  to 
reinstate  the  housewifely  crafts.  Quail  ran 
then  in  the  Black  Rock  by  hundreds, — 
so  you  will  still  find  them  in  fortunate 
years,  —  and  in  the  famine  time  the  women 
cut  their  long  hair  to  make  snares  when 
the  flocks  came  mornincr  and  evening:  to 
the  springs. 

Seyavi  made  baskets  for  love  and  sold 
them  for  money,  in  a  generation  that  pre- 
ferred iron  pots  for  utility.     Every  Indian 
woman  is  an   artist,  —  sees,  feels,  creates, 
i68 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 


but  does  not  philosophize  about  her  pro- 
cesses. Seyavis  bowls  are  wonders  of 
technical  precision,  inside  and  out,  the 
palm  finds  no  fault  with  them,  but  the 
subtlest  appeal  is  in  the  sense  that  warns 
us  of  humanness  in  the  way  the  design 
spreads  into  the  flare  of  the  bowl.  There 
used  to  be  an  Indian  woman  at  Olancha 
who  made  bottle-neck  trinket  baskets  in 
the  rattlesnake  pattern,  and  could  accom- 
modate the  design  to  the  swelling  bowl  and 
flat  shoulder  of  the  basket  without  sensible 
disproportion,  and  so  cleverly  that  you 
might  own  one  a  year  without  thinking  how 
it  was  done ;  but  Seyavi's  baskets  had  a 
touch  beyond  cleverness.  The  weaver  and 
the  warp  lived  next  to  the  earth  and  were 
saturated  with  the  same  elements.  Twice 
a  year,  in  the  time  of  white  butterflies  and 
again  when  young  quail  ran  neck  and  neck 
169 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

in  the  chaparral,  Seyavi  cut  willows  for 
basketry  by  the  creek  where  it  wound  to- 
ward the  river  against  the  sun  and  sucking- 
winds.  It  never  quite  reached  the  river 
except  in  far-between  times  of  summer 
flood,  but  it  always  tried,  and  the  willows 
encouraged  it  as  much  as  they  could.  You 
nearly  always  found  them  a  little  farther 
down  than  the  trickle  of  eager  water.  The 
Paiute  fashion  of  counting  time  appeals 
to  me  more  than  any  other  calendar.  They 
have  no  stamp  of  heathen  gods  nor  great 
ones,  nor  any  succession  of  moons  as  have 
red  men  of  the  East  and  North,  but  count 
forward  and  back  by  the  progress  of  the 
season  ;  the  time  of  taboose,  before  the  trout 
begin  to  leap,  the  end  of  the  pifion  harvest, 
about  the  beginning  of  deep  snows.  So 
they  get  nearer  the  sense  of  the  season, 
which  runs  early  or  late  according  as  the 
170 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

rains  are  forward  or  delayed.  But  when- 
ever Seyavi  cut  willows  for  baskets  was  al- 
ways a  golden  time,  and  the  soul  of  the 
weather  went  into  the  wood.  If  you  had 
ever  owned  one  of  Seyavi's  golden  russet 
cooking  bowls  with  the  pattern  of  plumed 
quail,  you  would  understand  all  this  with- 
out saying  anything. 

Before  Seyavi  made  baskets  for  the  sat- 
isfaction of  desire,  —  for  that  is  a  house-bred 
theory  of  art  that  makes  anything  more  of 


it,  —  she  danced  and  dressed  her  hair.  In 
those  days,  when  the  spring  was  at  flood 
and  the  blood  pricked  to  the  mating  fever, 
the  maids  chose  their  flowers,  wreathed 
themselves,  and  danced  in  the  twilights, 
young  desire  crying  out  to  young  desire. 
They  sang  what  the  heart  prompted,  what 
the  flower  expressed,  what  boded  in  the 
mating  weather. 

171 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

"  And  what  flower   did    you    wear,  Se- 
^avi  ? " 
/       "  I,   ah,  —  the  white  flower   of    twining 
C    (clematis),  on  my  body  and  my  hair,  and  so 


"  I  am  the  white  flower  of  twining, 
Little  white  flower  by  the  river, 
Oh,  flower  that  twines  close  by  the  river; 
Oh,  trembling  flower  ! 
So  trembles  the  maiden  heart." 

So  sang  Seyavi  of  the  campoodie  before 
she  made  baskets,  and  in  her  later  days 
laid  her  arms  upon  her  knees  and  laughed 
in  them  at  the  recollection.  But  it  was 
not  often  she  would  say  so  much,  never 
understanding  the  keen  hunger  I  had  for 
bits  of  lore  and  the  "  fool  talk  "  of  her  peo- 
ple. She  had  fed  her  young  son  with 
meadowlarks'  tongues,  to  make  him  quick 
of  speech  ;  but  in  late  years  was  loath  to 
172 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

admit  it,  though  she  had  come  through 
the  period  of  unfaith  in  the  lore  of  the  clan 
with  a  fine  appreciation  of  its  beauty  and 
significance. 

"  What  good  will  your  dead  get,  Seyavi, 
of  the  baskets  you  burn  ?  "  said  I,  coveting 
them  for  my  own  collection. 

Thus  Seyavi,  "  As  much  good  as  yours 
of  the  flowers  you  strew." 
^^ppapago  looks  on  Waban,  and  Waban 
on  Coso  and  the  Bitter  Lak^and  the  cam- 
poodie  looks  on   these   three;    and   more, 
^t  sees  the  beginning  of  winds  along  the 
foot  of  Coso,  the  gathering  of  clouds  be- 
hind the  high  ridges,  the  spring  flush,  the 
soft  spread  of  wild  almond  bloom  on  the 
mesa.      These    first,   you    understand,   are 
the  Paiute's  walls,  the  other  his  furnishings 
Not  the  wattled  hut  is  his  home,  but  the 
land,  the  winds,  the  hill  front,  the  stream. 
^71> 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

These  he  cannot  dupHcate  at  any  furbish- 
er's  shop  as  you  who  live  within  doors, 
who,  if  your  purse  allows,  may  have  the 
same  home  at  Sitka  and  Samarcand.  So 
you  see  how  it  is  that  the  homesickness 
of  an  Indian  is  often  unto  death,  since  he 
gets  no  relief  from  it;  neither  wind  nor 
weed  nor  sky-line,  nor  any  aspect  of  the 
hills  of  a  strange  land  sufficiently  like  his 
own.  So  it  was  when  the  government 
reached  out  for  the  Paiutes,  they  gathered 
into  the  Northern  Reservation  only  such 
poor  tribes  as  could  devise  no  other  end  of 
their  affairs.  Here,  all  along  the  river,  and 
south  to  Shoshone  Land,  live  the  clans  who 
owned  the  earth,  fallen  into  the  deplorable 
condition  of  hangers-on.  Yet  you  hear 
them  laughing  at  the  hour  when  they 
draw  in  to  the  campoodie  after  labor, 
when  there  is  a  smell  of  meat  and  the 
174 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

steam  of  the  cooking  pots  goes  up  against 
the  sun.     Then  the  children  He  with  their  / 
toes  in  the  ashes  to  hear  tales ;  then  they 
are  merry,  and  have  the  joys  of  repletion/ 
and  the  nearness  of  their  kind.    They  have  \ 
their  hills,   and   though    jostled   are   suffi- 
ciently free  to  get  some  fortitude  for  what  j 
will  come.      For  now  you  shall  hear  of  the 
end  of  the  basket  maker. 

In  her  best  days  Seyavi  was  most  like 
Deborah,  deep  bosomed,  broad  in  the  hips, 
c|inckjnjcounsel^  slow^f  speech,  esteemed 
of  her  people.  This  was  that  Seyavi  who 
reared  a  man  by  her  own  hand,  her  own 
wit,  and  none  other.  When  the  towns- 
people began  to  take  note  of  her  —  and  it 
was  some  years  after  the  war  before  there 
began  to  be  any  towns  —  she  was  then  in 
the  quick  maturity  of  primitive  women  ;  but 
when  I  knew  her  she  seemed  already  old. 
175 


'^^v 


^■"^^;,vV-V-, 


/   / 


'-'■         ik 


^       ^^^> 
^^&-^=^ 


;^ 


<;%^^V%^ 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

Indian  women  do  not  often  live  to  great 
age,  though  they  look  incredibly  steeped 
in  years.  They  have  the  wit  to  win  sus- 
tenance from  the  raw  material  of  life  with- 
out intervention,  but  they  have  not  the 
sleek  look  of  the  women  whom  the  social 
organization  conspires  to  nourish.  Seyavi 
had  somehow  squeezed  out  of  her  daily 
round  a  spiritual  ichor  that  kept  the  skill 
in  her  knotted  iinoers  lonor  after  the  ac- 
customed  time,  but  that  also  failed.  By 
all  counts  she  would  have  been  about 
sixty  years  old  when  it  came  her  turn  to 
sit  in  the  dust  on  the  sunny  side  of  the 
wickiup,  with  little  strength  left  for  any- 
thing but  looking.  And  in  time  she  paid 
the  toll  of  the  smoky  huts  and  became 
'blind.  This  is  a  thing  so  long  expected 
by  the  Paiutes  that  when  it  comes  they 
find  it  neither  bitter  nor  sweet,  but  toler- 
176 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

able  because  common.  There  were  three 
other  blind  women  in  the  campoodie,  with- 
ered fruit  on  a  bough,  but  they  had  mem- 
ory and  speech.  By  noon  of  the  sun  there 
were  never  any  left  in  the  campoodie  but 
these  or  some  mother  of  weanlings,  and 
they  sat  to  keep  the  ashes  warm  upon  the 
hearth.  If  it  were  cold,  they  burrowed  in 
the  blankets  of  the  hut;  if  it  were  warm, 
they  followed  the  shadow  of  the  wickiup 
around.  Stir  much  out  of  their  places 
they  hardly  dared,  since  one  might  not 
help  another;  but  they  called,  in  high,  old 
cracked  voices,  gossip  and  reminder  across 
the  ash  heaps. 

Then,  if  they  have  your  speech  or  you 
theirs,  and  have  an  hour  to  spare,  there 
are  things  to  be  learned  of  life  not  set 
down  in  any  books,  folk  tales,  famine  tales, 
love  and  long-suffering  and  desire,  but  no 
177 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

whimpering.  Now  and  then  one  or  an- 
other of  the  bhnd  keepers  of  the  camp  will 
come  across  to  where  you  sit  gossiping, 
tapping  her  way  among  the  kitchen  mid- 
dens, guided  by  your  voice  that  carries  far 
in  the  clearness  and  stillness  of  mesa  after- 
noons. But  suppose  you  find  Seyavi  re- 
tired into  the  privacy  of  her  blanket,  you 
will  get  nothing  for  that  day.  There  is 
no  other  privacy  possible  in  a  campoodie. 
All  the  processes  of  life  are  carried  on  out 
of  doors  or  behind  the  thin,  twig-woven 
walls  of  the  wickiup,  and  laughter  is  the 
only  corrective  for  behavior.  Very  early 
the  Indian  learns  to  possess  his  counte- 
nance in  impassivity,  to  cover  his  head  with 
his  blanket.  Something  to  wrap  around 
him  is  as  necessary  to  the  Paiute  as  to 
you  your  closet  to  pray  in. 

So    in    her   blanket    Seyavi,    sometime 
178 


THE    BASKET    MAKER 

/ 

basket  makers  sits  by  the  unlit  hearths  of 
her  tribe  and  digests  her  life,  nourishing 
her  spirit  against  the  •  time  of  the  spirit's 

need,  for  she  knows  in  fact  quite  as  much 

1  1       ''      ' 

of  theser matters  as  youjwho  have  a  larger 

hop^  though  she  has  none  but  the  cer- 
tainty that  having  borne  herself  coura- 
geously to  this  end  she  will  not  be  reborn 
a  coyote. 


THE   STREETS    OF   THE 
MOUNTAINS 


THE   STREETS   OF   THE 
MOUNTAINS 

ALL  streets  of  the  mountains  lead  to 
the  citadel;  steep  or  slow  they  go 
up  to  the  core  of  the  hills.  Any  trail  that 
goes  otherwhere  must  dip  and  cross,  sidle 
and  take  chances.  Rifts  of  the  hills  open 
into  each  other,  and  the  high  meadows 
are  often  wide  enough  to  be  called  valleys 
by  courtesy;  but  one  keeps  this  distinction 
in  mind,  —  valleys  are  the  sunken  places 
of  the  earth,  canons  are  scored  out  by 
the  glacier  ploughs  of  God.  They  have  a 
better  name  in  the  Rockies  for  these  hill- 
fenced  open  glades  of  pleasantness  ;  they 
call  them  parks.  Here  and  there  in  the 
hill  country  one  comes  upon  blind  gullies 
fronted  by  high  stony  barriers.  These 
183 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

head  also  for  the  heart  of  the  mountains; 
their  distinction  is  that  they  never  get  any- 
where. 

All  mountain  streets  have  streams  to 
thread  them,  or  deep  grooves  where  a 
stream  might  run.  You  would  do  well  to 
avoid  that  range  uncomforted  by  singing 
floods.  You  will  find  it  forsaken  of  most 
things  but  beauty  and  madness  and  death 
and  God.  Many  such  lie  east  and  north 
away  from  the  mid  Sierras,  and  quicken 
the  imagination  wath  the  sense  of  pur- 
poses not  revealed,  but  the  ordinary  trav- 
eler brings  nothing  away  from  them  but 
an  intolerable  thirst. 

The  river  caiions  of  the  Sierras  of  the 
Snows  are  better  worth  while  than  most 
Broadways,  though  the  choice  of  them  is 
like  the  choice  of  streets,  not  very  well  de- 
termined by  their  names.  There  is  always 
184 


THE    STREETS    OF   THE    MOUNTAINS 

an  amount  of  local  history  to  be  read  in 
the  names  of  mountain  highways  where 
one  touches  the  successive  waves  of  occu- 
pation or  discovery,  as  in  the  old  villages 
where  the  neighborhoods  are  not  built 
but  grow.  Here  you  have  the  Spanish 
Californian  in  Ccro  Gordo  and  pinon ; 
Symmes  and  Shepherd,  pioneers  both ; 
Tunawai,  probably  Shoshone  ;  Oak  Creek, 
Kearsarge,  —  easy  to  fix  the  date  of  that 
christening,  —  Tinpah,  Paiute  that;  Mist 
Carion  and  Paddy  Jack's.  The  streets  of 
the  west  Sierras  sloping  toward  the  San 
Joaquin  are  long  and  winding,  but  from 
the  east,  my  country,  a  day's  ride  carries 
one  to  the  lake  regions.  The  next  day 
reaches  the  passes  of  the  high  divide,  but 
whether  one  gets  passage  depends  a  little 
on  how  many  have  gone  that  road  before, 
and  much  on  one's  own  powers.  The 
185 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

passes  are  steep  and  windy  ridges,  though 
not  the  highest.  By  two  and  three  thou- 
sand feet  the  snow-caps  overtop  them.  It 
is  even  possible  to  win  through  the  Sierras 
without  having  passed  above  timber-Hne, 
but  one  misses  a  great  exhilaration. 

The  shape  of  a  new  mountain  is  coughly 
pyramidal,  running    out  into    long  shark- 
finned  ridges  that  interfere  and  merge  into 
other  thunder-splintered  sierras.     You  get 
the  saw-tooth  effect  from  a  distance,  but 
the  near-by  granite  bulk  glitters  with  the 
/      terrible  keen  polish  of  old  glacial  ages.     I 
(       say  terrible ;    so    it    seems.     When    those 
glossy  domes    swim    into    the    alpenglow, 
/     wet  after  rain,  you  conceive  how  long  and 
imperturbable  are  the  purposes  of  God. 

Never  believe   what  you  are  told,  that 
midsummer  is  the  best  time  to  go  up  the 
streets  of  the  mountain  —  well  —  perhaps 
1 86 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

for  the  merely  idle  or  sportsmanly  or  sci- 
entific; but  for  seeing  and  understanding, 
the  best  time  is  when  you  have  the  longest 
leave  to  stay.  And  here  is  a  hint  if  you 
would  attempt  the  stateliest  approaches ; 
travel  light,  and  as  much  as  possible  live 
off  the  land.  Mulligatawny  soup  and 
tinned  lobster  will  not  bring  you  the  favor 
of  the  woodlanders. 

Every  cafion  commends  itself  for  some 
particular  pleasantness  ;  this  for  pines,  an- 
other for  trout,  one  for  pure  bleak  beauty 
of  granite  buttresses,  one  for  its  far-flung 
irised  falls  ;  and  as  I  say,  though  some  are 
easier  going,  leads  each  to  the  cloud  shoul- 
dering citadel.  First,  near  the  canon  mouth 
you  get  the  low-heading  full-branched, 
one-leaf  pines.  That  is  the  sort  of  tree 
to  know  at  sight,  for  the  globose,  resin- 
dripping  cones  have  palatable,  nourishing 
187 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 


i.. 


M 


:p. 


kernels,  the  main  harvest  of  the  Paiutes. 
That  perhaps  accounts  for  their  growing 
accommodatingly  below  the  limit  of  deep 
snows,  grouped  sombrely  on  the  valley- 
ward  slopes.  The  real  procession  of  the 
pines  begins  in  the  rifts  with  the  long- 
leafed  Pinus  Jeffreyi,  sighing  its  soul  away 
upon  the  wind.  And  it  ought  not  to  sigh 
in  such  good  company.  Here  begins  the 
manzanita,  adjusting  its  tortuous  stiff  stems 
to  the  sharp  waste  of  boulders,  its^ale  olive 
leaves  twisting  edgewise  to  the  sleek,  ruddy, 
chestnut  stems ;  begins  also  the  meadow- 
sweet, burnished  laurel,  and  the  million 
unregarded  trumpets  of  the  coral-red  pent- 
stemon.  Wild  life  is  likely  to  be  busiest 
about  the  lower  pine  borders.  One  looks 
in  hollow  trees  and  hiving  rocks  for  wild 
honey.  The  drone  of  bees,  the  chatter  of 
jays,  the  hurry  and  stir  of  squirrels,  is  in- 
i88 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

cessant ;  the  air  is  odorous  and  hot.  The 
roar  of  the  stream  fills  up  the  morning 
and  evening  intervals,  and  at  night  the 
deer  feed  in  the  buckthorn  thickets.  It 
is  worth  watching  the  year  round  in  the 
purlieus  of  the  long-leafed  pines.  One 
month  or  another  you  get  sight  or  trail  of 
most  roving  mountain  dwellers  as  they  fol- 
low the  limit  of  forbidding  snows,  and  more 
bloom  than  you  can  properly  appreciate. 

Whatever  goes  up  or  comes  down  the 
streets  of  the  mountains,  water  has  the 
right  of  way ;  it  takes  the  lowest  ground 
and  the  shortest  passage.  Where  the 
rifts  are  narrow,  and  some  of  the  Sierra 
canons  are  not  a  stone's  throw  from  wall 
to  wall,  the  best  trail  for  foot  or  horse 
winds  considerably  above  the  watercourses ; 
but  in  a  country  of  cone-bearers  there  is 
usually  a  good  strip  of  swardy  sod  along 
189 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

the  canon  floor.  Pine  woods,  the  short- 
leafed  Balfour  and  Murryana  of  the  high 
Sierras,  are  sombre,  rooted  in  the  litter  of 
a  thousand  years,  hushed,  and  corrective 
to  the  spirit.  The  trail  passes  insensibly 
into  them  from  the  black  pines  and  a  thin 
belt  of  firs.  You  look  back  as  you  rise, 
and  strain  for  glimpses  of  the  tawny  val- 
ley, blue  glints  of  the  Bitter  Lake,  and 
tender  cloud  films  on  the  farther  ranges. 
For  such  pictures  the  pine  branches  make 
a  noble  frame.  Presently  they  close  in 
wholly;  they  draw  mysteriously  near,  cov- 
ering your  tracks,  giving  up  the  trail  indif- 
ferently, or  with  a  secret  grudge.  You  get 
a  kind  of  impatience  with  their  locked 
ranks,  until  you  come  out  lastly  on  some 
high,  windy  dome  and  see  what  they  are 
about.  They  troop  thickly  up  the  open 
ways,  river  banks,  and  brook  borders ;  up 
190 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

open  swales  of  dribbling  springs ;  swarm 
over  old  moraines  ;  circle  the  peaty  swamps 
and  part  and  meet  about  clean  still  lakes ; 
scale  the  stony  gullies  ;  tormented,  bowed, 
persisting  to  the  door  of  the  storm  cham- 
bers, tall  priests  to  pray  for  rain.  The 
spring  winds  lift  clouds  of  pollen  dust,  finer 
than  frankincense,  and  trail  it  out  over  high 
altars,  staining  the  snow.  No  doubt  they 
understand  this  work  better  than  we  ;  in 
fact  they  know  no  other.  "  Come,"  say 
the  churches  of  the  valleys,  after  a  season 
of  dry  years,  "  let  us  pray  for  rain."  They 
would  do  better  to  plant  more  trees. 

It  is  a  pity  we  have  let  the  gift  of  lyric ^ 
improvisation  die  out.  Sitting  islanded  on 
some  gray  peak  above  the  encompassing 
wood,  the  soul  is  lifted  up  to  sing  the  Iliad 
of  the  pines.  They  have  no  voice  but  the 
wind,  and  no  sound  of  them  rises  up  to  the 
191 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

high  places.  But  the  waters,  the  evidences 
of  their  power,  that  go  down  the  steep  and 
stony  ways,  the  outlets  of  ice-bordered 
pools,  the  young  rivers  swaying  with  the 
force  of  their  running,  they  sing  and  shout 
and  trumpet  at  the  falls,  and  the  noise  of  it 
far  outreaches  the  forest  spires.  You  see 
from  these  conning  towers  how  they  call 
and  find  each  other  in  the  slender  gorges  ; 
how  they  fumble  in  the  meadows,  needing 
the  sheer  nearing  walls  to  give  them  coun- 
tenance and  show  the  way;  and  how  the 
pine  woods  are  made  glad  by  them. 

Nothing  else  in  the  streets  of  the  moun- 
tains gives  such  a  sense  of  pageantry  as  the 
conifers ;  other  trees,  if  there  are  any,  are 
home  dwellers,  like  the  tender  fluttered, 
sisterhood  of  quaking  asp.  They  grow  in 
clumps  by  spring  borders,  and  all  their 
stems  have  a  permanent  curve  toward  the 

IQ2 


THE    STREETS    OF   THE    MOUNTAINS 

down  slope,  as  you  may  also  see  in  hill- 
side pines,  where  they  have  borne  the 
weight  of  sagging  drifts. 

Well  up  from  the  valley,  at  the  conflu- 
ence of  caiions,  are  delectable  summer 
meadows.  Fireweed  flames  about  them 
against  the  gray  boulders;  streams  are 
open,  go  smoothly  about  the  glacier  slips 
and  make  deep  bluish  pools  for  trout. 
Pines  raise  statelier  shafts  and  give  them- 
selves room  to  grow,  —  gentians,  shinleaf, 
and  little  grass  of  Parnassus  in  their 
golden  checkered  shadows ;  the  meadow  is 
white  with  violets  and  all  outdoors  keeps 
the  clock.  For  example,  when  the  ripples 
at  the  ford  of  the  creek  raise  a  clear  half 
tone,  —  sign  that  the  snow  water  has  come 
down  from  the  heated  high  ridges,  —  it  is 
time  to  light  the  evening  fire.  When  it 
drops  off  a  note  —  but  you  will  not  know 
193 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

it  except  the  Douglas  squirrel  tells  you 
with  his  high,  fluty  chirrup  from  the 
pines' aerial  gloom  —  sign  that  some  star 
watcher  has  caught  the  first  far  glint  of 
the  nearing  sun.  Whitney  cries  it  from 
his  vantage  tower;  it  flashes  from  Oppa- 
pago  to  the  front  of  Williamson ;  LeConte 
speeds  it  to  the  westering  peaks.  The 
high  rills  wake  and  run,  the  birds  begin. 
But  down  three  thousand  feet  in  the 
canon,  where  you  stir  the  fire  under  the 
cooking  pot,  it  will  not  be  day  for  an  hour. 
It  goes  on,  the  play  of  light  across  the 
high  places,  rosy,  purpling,  tender,  glint 
and  glow,  thunder  and  windy  flood,  like 
the  grave,  exulting  talk  of  elders  above  a 
merry  game. 

Who  shall  say  what  another  will  find 
most  to  his  liking   in  the  streets  of   the 
mountains.    As  for  me,  once  set  above  the 
194 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

country  of  the  silver  firs,  I  must  go  on 
until  I  find  white  columbine.  Around  the 
amphitheatres  of  the  lake  regions  and  above 
them  to  the  limit  of  perennial  drifts  they 
gather  flock-wise  in  splintered  rock  wastes. 
The  crowds  of  them,  the  airy  spread  of 
sepals,  the  pale  purity  of  the  petal  spurs, 
the  quivering  swing  of  bloom,  obsesses  the 
sense.  One  must  learn  to  spare  a  little  of 
the  pang  of  inexpressible  beauty,  not  to 
spend  all  one's  purse  in  one  shop.  There 
is  always  another  year,  and  another. 

Lingering  on  in  the  alpine  regions  until 
the  first  full  snow,  which  is  often  before 
the  cessation  of  bloom,  one  goes  down  in 
good  company.  First  snows  are  soft  and 
clogging  and  make  laborious  paths.  Then 
it  is  the  roving  inhabitants  range  down  to 
the  edge  of  the  wood,  below  the  limit  of 
early  storms.  Early  winter  and  early 
195 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

spring  one  may  have  sight  or  track  of  deer 
and  bear  and  bighorn,  cougar  and  bobcat, 
about  the  thickets  of  buckthorn  on  open 
slopes  between  the  black  pines.  But  when 
the  ice  crust  is  firm  above  the  twenty  foot 
drifts,  they  range  far  and  forage  where 
they  will.  Often  in  midwinter  will  come, 
now  and  then,  a  long  fall  of  soft  snow  pil- 
ing three  or  four  feet  above  the  ice  crust, 
and  work  a  real  hardship  for  the  dwellers 
of  these  streets.  When  such  a  storm  por- 
tends the  weather-wise  black-tail  will  go 
down  across  the  valley  and  up  to  the  pas- 
tures of  Waban  where  no  more  snow  falls 
than  suffices  to  nourish  the  sparsely  grow- 
ing pines.  But  the  bighorn,  the  wild 
sheep,  able  to  bear  the  bitterest  storms 
with  no  signs  of  stress,  cannot  cope  with 
the  loose  shifty  snow.  Never  such  a 
storm  goes  over  the  mountains  that  the 
196 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 


Indians  do  not  catch  them  floundering 
belly  deep  among  the  lower  rifts.  I  have 
a  pair  of  horns,  inconceivably  heavy,  that 
were  borne  as  late  as  a  year  ago  by  a  very 
monarch  of  the  flock  whom  death  over- 
took at  the  mouth  of  Oak  Creek  after  a^ 
week  of  wet  snow.  He  met  it  as  a  king 
should,  with  no  vain  effort  or  trembling, 
and  it  was  wholly  kind  to  take  him  so  with 
four  of  his  following  rather  than  that  the 
night  prowlers  should  find  him. 

There  is  always  more  life  abroad  in  the 
winter  hills  than  one  looks  to  find,  and 
much  more  in  evidence  than  in  summer 
weather.  Light  feet  of  hare  that  make  no 
print  on  the  forest  litter  leave  a  wondrously 
plain  track  in  the  snow.  We  used  to  look 
and  look  at  the  beginning  of  winter  for 
the  birds  to  come  down  from  the  pine 
lands ;  looked  in  the  orchard  and  stubble ; 
197 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

looked  north  and  south  on  the  mesa  for 
their  migratory  passing,  and  wondered  that 
they  never  came.  Busy  Httle  grosbeaks 
picked  about  the  kitchen  doors,  and  wood- 
peckers tapped  the  eves  of  the  farm  build- 
ings, but  we  saw  hardly  any  other  of  the 
frequenters  of  the  summer  carious.  After 
a  while  when  we  grew  bold  to  tempt  the 
snow  borders  we  found  them  in  the  street 
of  the  mountains.  In  the  thick  pine  woods 
where  the  overlapping  boughs  hung  with 
snow  -  wreaths  make  wind  -  proof  shelter 
tents,  in  a  very  community  of  dwelling, 
winter  the  bird-folk  who  get  their  living 
from  the  persisting  cones  and  the  larvae 
harboring  bark.  Ground  inhabiting  spe- 
cies seek  the  dim  snow  chambers  of  the 
chaparral.  Consider  how  it  must  be  in  a 
hill-slope  overgrown  with  stout  -  twigged, 
partly  evergreen  shrubs,  more  than  man 
198 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

high,  and  as  thick  as  a  hedge.  Not  all  the 
caiion's  sifting  of  snow  can  fill  the  intri- 
cate spaces  of  the  hill  tangles.  Here  and 
there  an  overhanging  rock,  or  a  stiff  arch 
of  buckthorn,  makes  an  opening  to  com- 
municating rooms  and  runways  deep  under 
the  snow. 

The  light  filtering  through  the  snow  walls 
is  blue  and  ghostly,  but  serves  to  show 
seeds  of  shrubs  and  grass,  and  berries,  and 
the  wind-built  walls  are  warm  against  the 
wind.  It  seems  that  live  plants,  especially 
if  they  are  evergreen  and  growing,  give  off 
heat;  the  snow  wall  melts  earliest  from 
within  and  hollows  to  thinness  before  there 
is  a  hint  of  spring  in  the  air.  But  you 
think  of  these  things  afterward.  Up  in 
the  street  it  has  the  effect  of  being  done 
consciously ;  the  buckthorns  lean  to  each 
other  and  the  drift  to  them,  the  little  birds 
199 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

run  in  and  out  of  their  appointed  ways 
with  the  greatest  cheerfulness.  They  give 
almost  no  tokens  of  distress,  and  even  if 
the  winter  tries  them   too   much  you  are 

!  not  to  pity  them.     You  of  the  house  habit 
('    can  hardly   understand   the   sense   of   the 

\  hills.  No  doubt  the  labor  of  being  com- 
fortable gives  you  an  exaggerated  opinion 
of  yourself,  an  exaggerated  pain  to  be  set 
aside.  Whether  the  wild  things  under- 
stand it  or  not  they  adapt  themselves  to  its 
processes  with  the  greater  ease.  The  busi- 
ness that  goes  on  in  the  street  of  the  moun- 
tain is  tremendous,  world-formative.  Here 
go  birds,  squirrels,  and  red  deer,  children 
crying   small    wares    and    playing    in    the 

(Street,  but  they  do  not  obstruct  its  affairs. 

Summer   is  their  holiday ;    "  Come  now," 

says  the  lord  of  the  street,  "  I  have  need  of 

a  great  work  and  no  more  playing." 

200 


THE    STREETS    OF    THE    MOUNTAINS 

But  they  are  left  borders  and  breathing- 
space  out  of  pure  kindness.     They  are  not   ) 
pushed  out  except  by  the  exigencies  of  the  ( 
nobler  plan  which  they  accept  with  a  dig-    / 
nity  the  rest  of  us  have  not  yet  learned.      / 


V 


WATER    BORDERS 


■"^^^f" 


WATER   BORDERS 


I  LIKE  that  name  the  Indians  give  to 
the  mountain  of  Lone  Pine,  and  find  it 
pertinent  to  my  subject, —  Oppapago,  The 
Weeper.  It  sits  eastward  and  solitary  from 
the  lordliest  ranks  of  the  Sierras,  and  above 
a  range  of  little,  old,  blunt  hills,  and  has  a 
bowed,  grave  aspect  as  of  some  woman 
you  might  have  known,  looking  out  across 
the  grassy  barrows  of  her  dead.  From  twin 
gray  lakes  under  its  noble  brow  stream 
down  incessant  white  and  tumbling  waters. 
"  Mahala  all  time  cry,"  said  Winnenap', 
drawing  furrows  in  his  rugged,  wrinkled 
cheeks. 

The  origin  of  mountain  streams  is  like 
the  origin  of  tears,  patent   to  the  under- 
standing   but    mysterious    to    the    sense. 
205 


WATER    BORDERS 

They  are  always  at  it,  but  one  so  seldom 
catches  them  in  the  act.  Here  in  the  val- 
ley there  is  no  cessation  of  waters  even  in 
the  season  when  the  niggard  frost  gives 
them  scant  leave  to  run.  They  make  the 
most  of  their  midday  hour,  and  tinkle  all 
night  thinly  under  the  ice.  An  ear  laid  to 
the  snow  catches  a  muffled  hint  of  their 
eternal  busyness  fifteen  or  twenty  feet 
under  the  caiion  drifts,  and  long  before 
any  appreciable  spring  thaw,  the  sagging 
edges  of  the  snow  bridges  mark  out  the 
place  of  their  running.  One  who  ventures 
to  look  for  it  finds  the  immediate  source  of 
the  spring  freshets  —  all  the  hill  fronts  fur- 
rowed with  the  reek  of  melting  drifts,  all 
the  gravelly  flats  in  a  swirl  of  waters.  But 
later,  in  June  or  July,  when  the  camping 
season  begins,  there  runs  the  stream  away 
full  and  singing,  with  no  visible  reinforce- 
206 


WATER    BORDERS 

ment  other  than  an  icy  trickle  from  some 
high,  belated  clot  of  snow.  Oftenest  the 
stream  drops  bodily  from  the  bleak  bowl 
of  some  alpine  lake  ;  sometimes  breaks  out 
of  a  hillside  as  a  spring  where  the  ear  can 
trace  it  under  the  rubble  of  loose  stones  to 
the  neighborhood  of  some  blind  pool.  But 
that  leaves  the  lakes  to  be  accounted  for. 

The  lake  is  the  eye  of  the  mountain,  jade 
green,  placid,  unwinking,  also  unfathom- 
able. Whatever  goes  on  under  the  high 
and  stony  brows  is  guessed  at.  It  is  always 
a  favorite  local  tradition  that  one  or  an- 
other of  the  blind  lakes  is  bottomless.  Of- 
ten they  lie  in  such  deep  cairns  of  broken 
boulders  that  one  never  gets  quite  to  them, 
or  gets  away  unhurt.  One  such  drops  be- 
low the  plunging  slope  that  the  Kearsarge 
trail  winds  over,  perilously,  nearing  the  pass. 
It  lies  still  and  wickedly  green  in  its  sharp- 
207 


WATER    BORDERS 

lipped  cup,  and  the  guides  of  that  region 
love  to  tell  of  the  packs  and  pack  animals 
it  has  swallowed  up. 

But  the  lakes  of  Oppapago  are  perhaps 
not  so  deep,  less  green  than  gray,  and  better 
befriended.  The  ousel  haunts  them,  while 
still  hang  about  their  coasts  the  thin  under- 
cut drifts  that  never  quite  leave  the  high 
altitudes.  In  and  out  of  the  bluish  ice 
caves  he  flits  and  sings,  and  his  singing 
heard  from  above  is  sweet  and  uncanny 
like  the  Nixie's  chord.  One  finds  butter- 
flies, too,  about  these  high,  sharp  regions 
which  might  be  called  desolate,  but  will  not 
by  me  who  love  them.  This  is  above  tim- 
ber-line but  not  too  high  for  comforting  by 
succulent  small  herbs  and  golden  tufted 
grass.  A  granite  mountain  does  not 
crumble  with  alacrity,  but  once  resolved  to 
soil  makes  the  best  of  it.  Every  handful 
208 


WATER    BORDERS 


of  loose  gravel  not  wholly  water  leached 
affords  a  plant  footing,  and  even  in  such 
unpromising  surroundings  there  is  a  choice 
of  locations.  There  is  never  going  to  be 
any  communism  of  mountain  herbage,  their 
affinities  are  too  sure.  Full  in  the  runnels 
of  snow  water  on  gravelly,  open  spaces  in 
the  shadow  of  a  drift,  one  looks  to  find 
buttercups,  frozen  knee-deep  by  night,  and 
owning  no  desire  but  to  ripen  their  fruit 
above  the  icy  bath.  Soppy  little  plants  of 
the  portulaca  and  small,  fine  ferns  shiver 
under  the  drip  of  falls  and  in  dribbling 
crevices.  The  bleaker  the  situation,  so  it 
is  near  a  stream  border,  the  better  the  cas- 
siope  loves  it.  Yet  I  have  not  found  it 
on  the  polished  glacier  slips,  but  where 
the  country  rock  cleaves  and  splinters  in 
the  high  windy  headlands  that  the  wild 
sheep  frequents,  hordes  and  hordes  of  the 
209 


WATER    BORDERS 


white  bells  swing  over  matted,  mossy  foli- 
age. On  Oppapago,  which  is  also  called 
Sheep  Mountain,  one  finds  not  far  from  the 
beds  of  cassiope  the  ice-worn,  stony  hollows 
where  the  bighorns  cradle  their  young. 
These  are  above  the  wolf's  quest  and  the 
eagle's  wont,  and  though  the  heather  beds 
are  softer,  they  are  neither  so  dry  nor  so 
warm,  and  here  only  the  stars  go  by.  No 
other  animal  of  any  pretensions  makes  a 
habitat  of  the  alpine  regions.  Now  and 
then  one  gets  a  hint  of  some  small,  brown 
creature,  rat  or  mouse  kind,  that  slips 
secretly  among  the  rocks  ;  no  others  adapt 
themselves  to  desertness  of  aridity  or  alti- 
tude so  readily  as  these  ground  inhabiting, 
graminivorous  species.  If  there  is  an  open 
stream  the  trout  go  up  the  lake  as  far  as 
the  water  breeds  food  for  them,  but  the 
ousel  goes  farthest,  for  pure  love  of  it. 

2IO 


WATER    BORDERS 


Since  no  lake  can  be  at  the  highest 
point,  it  is  possible  to  find  plant  life  higher 
than  the  water  borders ;  grasses  perhaps 
the  highest,  gilias,  royal  blue  trusses  of  po- 
lymonium,  rosy  plats  of  Sierra  primroses. 
What  one  has  to  get  used  to  in  flowers  at 
high  altitudes  is  the  bleaching  of  the  sun. 
Hardly  do  they  hold  their  virgin  color  for 
a  day,  and  this  early  fading  before  their 
function  is  performed  gives  them  a  pitiful 
appearance  not  according  with  their  hardi- 
hood. The  color  scheme  runs  along  the 
high  ridges  from  blue  to  rosy  purple,  car- 
mine and  coral  red ;  along  the  water  borders 
it  is  chiefly  white  and  yellow  where  the 
mimulus  makes  a  vivid  note,  runnins:  into 
red  when  the  two  schemes  meet  and  mix 
about  the  borders  of  the  meadows,  at  the 
upper  limit  of  the  columbine. 

Here  is  the  fashion  in  which  a  mountain 

211 


WATER    BORDERS 

stream  gets  down  from  the  perennial  pas- 
tures of  the  snow  to  its  proper  level  and 
identity  as  an  irrigating  ditch.  It  slips 
stilly  by  the  glacier  scoured  rim  of  an  ice 
bordered  pool,  drops  over  sheer,  broken 
ledges  to  another  pool,  gathers  itself, 
plunges  headlong  on  a  rocky  ripple  slope, 
finds  a  lake  again,  reinforced,  roars  down- 
ward to  a  pot-hole,  foams  and  bridles,  glides 
a  tranquil  reach  in  some  still  meadow, 
tumbles  into  a  sharp  groove  between  hill 
flanks,  curdles  under  the  stream  tangles, 
and  so  arrives  at  the  open  country  and 
steadier  going.  Meadows,  little  strips  of 
alpine  freshness,  begin  before  the  timber- 
line  is  reached.  Here  one  treads  on  a 
carpet  of  dwarf  willows,  downy  catkins  of 
creditable  size  and  the  greatest  economy 
of  foliage  and  stems.  No  other  plant  of 
high  altitudes  knows  its  business  so  well. 

212 


WATER    BORDERS 

It  hugs  the  ground,  grows  roots  from  stem 
joints  where  no  roots  should  be,  grows  a 
slender  leaf  or  two  and  twice  as  many  erect 
full  catkins  that  rarely,  even  in  that  short 
growing  season,  fail  of  fruit.  Dipping  over 
banks  in  the  inlets  of  the  creeks,  the  fortu- 
nate find  the  rosy  apples  of  the  miniature 
manzanita,  barely,  but  always  quite  suffi- 
ciently, borne  above  the  spongy  sod.  It 
does  not  do  to  be  anything  but  humble  in 
the  alpine  regions,  but  not  fearful.  I  have 
pawed  about  for  hours  in  the  chill  sward 
of  meadows  where  one  might  properly  ex- 
pect to  get  one's  death,  and  got  no  harm 
from  it,  except  it  might  be  Oliver  Twist's 
complaint.  One  comes  soon  after  this  to 
shrubby  willows,  and  where  willows  are 
trout  may  be  confidently  looked  for  in 
most  Sierra  streams.  There  is  no  account- 
ing for  their  distribution  ;  though  provident 
213 


WATER    BORDERS 

anglers  have  assisted  nature  of  late,  one 
still  comes  upon  roaring  brown  waters 
where  trout  might  very  well  be,  but  are 
not. 

The  highest  limit  of  conifers  —  in  the 
middle  Sierras,  the  white  bark  pine  —  is 
not  along  the  water  border.  They  come 
to  it  about  the  level  of  the  heather,  but 
they  have  no  such  affinity  for  dampness  as 
the  tamarack  pines.  Scarcely  any  bird- 
note  breaks  the  stillness  of  the  timber-line, 
but  chipmunks  inhabit  here,  as  may  be 
guessed  by  the  gnawed  ruddy  cones  of  the 

^  pines,  and  lowering  hours  the  woodchucks 
i    come  down  to  the  water.     On  a  little  spit 

\oi  land  running  into  Windy  Lake  we  found 

/  one  summer  the  evidence  of  a  tragedy ;  a 
j    pair  of  sheep's  horns  not  fully  grown  caught 

1   in  the  crotch  of  a  pine  where  the  living 
sheep  must  have  lodged  them.    The  trunk 
214 


WATER    BORDERS 

of  the  tree  had  quite  closed  over  them,  and 
the  skull  bones  crumbled  away  from  the 
weathered  horn  cases.  We  hoped  it  was 
not  too  far  out  of  the  running  of  night( 
prowlers  to  have  put  a  speedy  end  to  the 
long  agony,  but  we  could  not  be  sure.  I 
never  liked  the  spit  of  Windy  Lake  again. 
It  seems  that  all  snow  nourished  plants 
count  nothing  so  excellent  in  their  kind  as 
to  be  forehanded  with  their  bloom,  work- 
ing secretly  to  that  end  under  the  high 
piled  winters.  The  heathers  begin  by  the 
lake  borders,  while  little  sodden  drifts  still 
shelter  under  their  branches.  I  have  seen 
the  tiniest  of  them  {Kalmia  glaucd)  bloom- 
ing, and  with  well-formed  fruit,  a  foot  away 
from  a  snowbank  from  which  it  could 
hardly  have  emerged  within  a  week.  Some- 
how the  soul  of  the  heather  has  entered 
into  the  blood  of  the  English-speaking. 
215 


WATER    BORDERS 

"And  oh!  is  that  heather?"  they  say; 
and  the  most  indifferent  ends  by  picking 
a  sprig  of  it  in  a  hushed,  wondering  way. 
One  must  suppose  that  the  root  of  their 
respective  races  issued  from  the  glacial 
borders  at  about  the  same  epoch,  and  re- 
member their  origin. 

Among  the  pines  where  the  slope  of  the 
land  allows  it,  the  streams  run  into  smooth, 
brown,  trout-abounding  rills  across  open 
flats  that  are  in  reality  filled  lake  basins. 
These  are  the  displaying  grounds  of  the 
gentians  —  blue  —  blue  —  eye  -  blue,  per- 
haps, virtuous  and  likable  flowers.  One  is 
not  surprised  to  learn  that  they  have  tonic 
properties.  But  if  your  meadow  should  be 
outside  the  forest  reserve,  and  the  sheep 
have  been  there,  you  will  find  little  but  the 
shorter,  paler  G.  Newbcrryii,  and  in  the 
matted  sods  of  the  little  tongues  of  green- 
216 


i 


WATER    BORDERS 

ness  that  lick  up  among  the  pines  along 
the  watercourses,  white,  scentless,  nearly 
stemless,  alpine  violets. 
J-  At  about  the  nine  thousand  foot  level 
and  in  the  summer  there  will  be  hosts  of 
rosy-winged  dodecatheon,  called  shooting- 
stars,  outlining  the  crystal  runnels  in  the 
sod.  Single  flowers  have  often  a  two-inch 
spread  of  petal,  and  the  full,  twelve  blos- 
somed heads  above  the  slender  pedicels 
have  the  airy  effect  of  wings. 

It  is  about  this  level  one  looks  to  find 
the  largest  lakes  with  thick  ranks  of  pines 
bearing  down  on  them,  often  swamped  in 
the  summer  floods  and  paying  the  inevita- 
ble penalty  for  such  encroachment.  Here 
in  wet  coves  of  the  hills  harbors  that  crowd 
of  bloom  that  makes  the  wonder  of  the  Si- 
erra cafions. 

Thej^^driftunder^the^ alternate   flicker 
217 


WATER    BORDERS 

and  gloom  of  the  windy  rooms  of  pines,  in 
gray  rock  shelters,  and  by  the  ooze  of  blind 
springs,  and  their  juxtapositions  are  the 
be?t  imaginable.  Lilies  come  up  out  of 
fern  beds,  columbine  swings  over  meadow- 
sweet, white  rein-orchids  quake  in  the  lean- 
ing grass.  Open  swales,  where  in  wet  years 
may  be  running  water,  are  plantations  of 
false  hellebore  (  Veratrum  Calif  or  iiicum), 
tall,  branched  candelabra  of  greenish  bloom 
above  the  sessile,  sheathing,  boat-shaped 
leaves,  semi  -  translucent  in  the  sun.  A 
stately  plant  of  the  lily  family,  but  why 
"false  .f*"  It  is  frankly  offensive  in  its 
character,  and  its  young  juices  deadly  as 
any  hellebore  that  ever  grew. 

Like    most  mountain   herbs    it    has   an 

uncanny  haste  to  bloom.     One   hears  by 

night,  when  all  the  wood  is  still,  the  crepi- 

tatious  rustle  of  the  unfolding  leaves  and 

218 


WATER    BORDERS 


the  pushing  flower-stalk  within,  that  has 
open  blossoms  before  it  has  fairly  un- 
cramped  from  the  sheath.  It  commends 
itself  by  a  certain  exclusiveness  of  growth, 
taking  enough  room  and  never  elbowing ; 
for  if  the  flora  of  the  lake  region  has  a  fault 
it  is  that  there  is  too  much  of  it.  We  have 
more  than  three  hundred  species  from 
Kearsarge  Canon  alone,  and  if  that  does 
not  include  them  all  it  is  because  they  were 
already  collected  otherwhere. 

One  expects  to  find  lakes  down  to  about 
nine  thousand  feet,  leading  into  each  other 
by  comparatively  open  ripple  slopes  and 
white  cascades.  Below  the  lakes  are  filled 
basins  that  are  still  spongy  swamps,  or 
substantial  meadows,  as  they  get  down  and 
down. 

Here  begin  the  stream  tangles.  On 
the  east  slopes  of  the  middle  Sierras  the 
219 


TER    BORDERS 

pines,  all  but  an  occasional  yellow  variety, 
desert  the  stream  borders  about  the  level 
of  the  lowest  lakes,  and  the  birches  and 
tree-willows  begin.  The  firs  hold  on  al- 
most to  the  mesa  levels,  —  there  are  no 
foothills  on  this  eastern  slope,  —  and  who- 
ever has  firs  misses  nothing  else.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  a  tree  that  can  afford 
to  take  fifty  years  to  its  first  fruiting  will 
repay  acquaintance.  It  keeps,  too,  all  that 
half  century,  a  virginal  grace  of  outline, 
but  having  once  flowered,  begins  quietly 
to  put  away  the  things  of  its  youth.  Year 
by  year  the  lower  rounds  of  boughs  are 
shed,  leaving  no  scar;  year  by  year  the 
star-branched  minarets  approach  the  sky, 
A  fir-tree  loves  a  water  border,  loves  a  long 
wind  in  a  draughty  caiion,  loves  to  spend 
itself  secretly  on  the  inner  finishings  of  its 
burnished,  shapely  cones.  Broken  open 
220 


WATER    BORDERS 

in  mid-season  the  petal-shaped  scales  show 
a  crimson  satin  surface,  perfect  as  a  rose. 

The  birch  —  the  brown-bark  western 
birch  characteristic  of  lower  stream  tangles 
—  is  a  spoil  sport.  It  grows  thickly  to 
choke  the  stream  that  feeds  it ;  grudges  it 
the  sky  and  space  for  angler's  rod  and  fly. 
The  willows  do  better ;  painted-cup,  cypri- 
pedium,  and  the  hollow  stalks  of  span-broad 
white  umbels,  find  a  footing  among  their 
stems.  But  in  general  the  steep  plunges, 
the  white  swirls,  green  and  tawny  pools, 
the  gliding  hush  of  waters  between  the 
meadows  and  the  mesas  afford  little  fish 
[no-  and  few  flowers. 


t> 


One  looks  for  these  to  begin  again  when 
once  free  of  the  rifted  caiion  walls;  the 
high  note  of  babble  and  laughter  falls  off 
to  the  steadier  mellow  tone  of  a  stream 
that  knows  its  purpose  and  reflects  the  sky. 

221 


OTHER   WATER    BORDERS 


I 


OTHER   WATER    BORDERS 

T  is  the  proper  destiny  of  every  consid- 
erable stream  in  the  west  to  become  an 
irrisatino^  ditch.  It  would  seem  the  streams 
are  willing.  They  go  as  far  as  they  can, 
or  dare,  toward  the  tillable  lands  in  their 
own  boulder  fenced  gullies  —  but  how 
much  farther  in  the  man-made  waterways. 
It  is  difficult  to  come  into  intimate  relations 
with  appropriated  waters ;  like  very  busy 
people  they  have  no  time  to  reveal  them- 
selves. One  needs  to  have  known  an  irri- 
gating ditch  when  it  was  a  brook,  and  to 
have  lived  by  it,  to  mark  the  morning  and 
evening  tone  of  its  crooning,  rising  and 
falling  to  the  excess  of  snow  water;  to  have 
watched  far  across  the  valley,  south  to  the 
Eclipse  and  north  to  the  Twisted  Dyke, 

22  tj 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

the  shining  wall  of  the  village  water  gate ; 
to  see  still  blue  herons  stalking  the  little 
glinting  weirs  across  the  field. 

Perhaps  to  get  into   the   mood   of  the 
.waterways    one    needs    to    have    seen    old 

/Amos  Judson  asquat  on  the  headgate  with 
his  gun,  guarding  his  water-right  toward 

\the  end  of  a  dry  summer./  Amos  owned 
the  half  of  Tule  Creek  and  the  other  half 
pertained  to  the  neighboring  Greenfields 
ranch.  Years  of  a  "  short  water  crop,"  that 
IS,  when  too  little  snow  fell  on  the  high 
pine  ridges,  or,  falling,  melted  too  early, 
^mos  held  that  it  took  all  the  water  that 
came  down  to  make  his  half,  and  maintained 
it  with  a  Winchester  and  a  deadly  aim.J) 
Jesus  Montafia,  first  proprietor  of  Green- 
fields,—  you  can  see  at  once  that  Judson 
had  the  racial  advantage,  —  contesting  the 
right  with  him,  walked  into  five  of  Judson's 
226 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 


bullets  and  his  eternal  possessions  on  the 
same  occasion.  That  was  the  Homeric 
age  of  settlement  and  passed  into  tradition. 
Twelve  years  later  one  of  the  Clarks,  hold- 
ing Greenfields,  not  so  very  green  by  now, 
shot  one  of  the  Judsons.  Perhaps  he  hoped 
that  also  might  become  classic,  but  the  jury 
found  for  manslaughter.  It  had  the  effect 
of  discouraging  the  Greenfields  claim,  but 
Amos  used  to  sit  on  the  headgate  just  the 
same,  as  quaint  and  lone  a  figure  as  the 
sandhill  crane  watching  for  water  toads 
below  the  Tule  drop.  Every  subsequent 
owner  of  Greenfields  bought  it  with  Amos 
in  full  view.  The  last  of  these  was  Die- 
drick.  Along  in  August  of  that  year  came 
a  week  of  low  water.  Judson's  ditch  failed 
and  he  went  out  with  his  rifle  to  learn  why. 
There  on  the  headgate  sat  Diedrick's  frau 
with  a  long-handled  shovel  across  her  lap 
227 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

'^nd  all  the  water  turned  into  Diedrick's 
ditch ;  there  she  sat  knitting  through  the 
long  sun,  and  the  children  brought  out  her 
dinner.  It  was  all  up  with  Amos ;  he  was 
too  much  of  a  gentleman  to  fight  a  lady  — 
that  was  the  way  he  expressed  it.  She  was 
a  very  large  lady,  and  a  long-handled  shovel 
is  no  mean  weapon.  The  next  year  Judson 
and  Diedrick  put  in  a  modern  water  gauge 
and  took  the  summer  ebb  in  equal  inches. 
Some  of  the  water-right  difficulties  are 
more  squalid  than  this,  some  more  tragic  ; 
but  unless  you  have  known  them  you  can- 
not very  well  know  what  the  water  thinks 
as  it  slips  past  the  gardens  and  in  the  long 
slow  sweeps  of  the  canal.  You  get  that 
sense  of  broodino:  from  the  confined  and 
sober  floods,  not  all  at  once  but  by  de- 
grees, as  one  might  become  aware  of  a  mid- 
dle-a^ed  and  serious  neio^hbor  who  has  had 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

that  in  his  life  to  make  him  so.  It  is  the 
repose  of  the  completely  accepted  instinct. 
With  the  water  runs  a  certain  following 
of  thirsty  herbs  and  shrubs.  The  willows 
go  as  far  as  the  stream  goes,  and  a  bit  far- 
ther on  the  slightest  provocation.  They 
will  strike  root  in  the  leak  of  a  flume,  or 
the  dribble  of  an  overfull  bank,  coaxing 
the  water  beyond  its  appointed  bounds. 
Given  a  new  waterway  in  a  barren  land, 
and  in  three  years  the  willows  have  fringed 
all  its  miles  of  banks  ;  three  years  more  and 
they  will  touch  tops  across  it.  It  is  perhaps 
due  to  the  early  usurpation  of  the  willows 
that  so  little  else  finds  growing-room  along 
the  large  canals.  The  birch  beginning  far 
back  in  the  canon  tangles  is  more  conser- 
vative ;  it  is  shy  of  man  haunts  and  needs 
to  have  the  permanence  of  its  drink  assured. 
It  stops  far  short  of  the  summer  limit  of 
229 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

waters,  and  I  have  never  known  it  to  take 
up  a  position  on  the  banks  beyond  the 
ploughed  lands.  There  is  something  almost 
like  premeditation  in  the  avoidance  of  cul- 
tivated tracts  by  certain  plants  of  water 
borders.  The  clematis,  mingling  its  foliage 
secretly  with  its  host,  comes  down  with  the 
stream  tangles  to  the  village  fences,  skips 
over  to  corners  of  little  used  pasture  lands 
and  the  plantations  that  spring  up  about 
waste  water  pools  ;  but  never  ventures  a 
footing  in  the  trail  of  spade  or  plough ;  will 
not  be  persuaded  to  grow  in  any  garden 
plot.  On  the  other  hand,  the  horehound, 
the  common  European  species  imported 
with  the  colonies,  hankers  after  hedgerows 
and  snug  little  borders.  It  is  more  widely 
distributed  than  many  native  species,  and 
may  be  always  found  along  the  ditches  in 
the  village  corners,  where  it  is  not  appre- 
230 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

ciated.  The  irrigating  ditch  is  an  impartial 
distributer.  It  gathers  all  the  alien  weeds 
that  come  west  in  garden  and  grass  seeds 
and  affords  them  harbor  in  its  banks. 
There  one  finds  the  European  mallow 
{Malva  rotundifolia)  spreading  out  to  the 
streets  with  the  summer  overflow,  and  every 
spring  a  dandelion  or  two,  brought  in  with 
the  blue  grass  seed,  uncurls  in  the  swardy 
soil.  Farther  than  either  of  these  have 
come  the  lilies  that  the  Chinese  coolies 
cultivate  in  adjacent  mud  holes  for  their 
foodful  bulbs.  The  seegoo  establishes  it- 
self veiy-4^adily  in  swampy  J3Qrders,^nd 
th e  white-  blossom-spikes  -amo»g  tke-arrQw- 
pointed  leaves  are  £uite  as  acceptable  to 
the  eye  as  any  native  species. 

In  the  neighborhood  of  towns  founded 
by  the  Spanish  Californians,  whether  this 
plant  is  native  to  the  locality  or  not,  one  can 
231 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

always  find  aromatic  clumps  oi  yerba  bue7ia, 
the  "  good  herb  "  {Micromeria  Douglassii). 
The  virtue  of  it  as  a  febrifuge  was  taught 
to  the  mission  fathers  by  the  neophytes, 
and  wise  old  dames  of  my  acquaintance  have 
worked  astonishing  cures  with  it  and  the 
succulent  jK^r<5^  mansa.  This  last  is  native 
to  wet  meadows  and  distinguished  enough 
to  have  a  family  all  to  itself. 

Where  the  irrigating  ditches  are  shallow 

and  a  little  neglected,  they  choke  quickly 

with  watercress  that  multiplies  about  the 

i  lowest  Sierra  springs.     It  is  characteristic 

/  of  the  frequenters  of  water  borders  near 

'man  haunts,  that   they  are  chiefly  of  the 

sorts  that  are  useful  to  man,  as  if  they  made 

their  services  an  excuse  for  the  intrusion. 

The  joint-grass  of  soggy  pastures  produces 

edible,  nut-flavored   tubers,  called  by  the 

Indians  taboose.     The  common  reed  of  the 


232 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

ultramontane  marshes  (here  Phi^agmites 
vulgaris),  a  very  stately,  whispering  reed, 
light  and  strong  for  shafts  or  arrows,  affords 
sweet  sap  and  pith  which  makes  a  passable 
sugar. 

It  seems  the  secrets  of  plant  powers  and 
influences  yield  themselves  most  readily  to 
primitive  peoples,  at  least  one  never  hears 
of  the  knowledge  coming  from  any  other 
source.  The  Indian  never  concerns  him- 
self, as  the  botanist  and  the  poet,  with  the 
plant's  appearances  and  relations,  but  with 
what  it  can  do  for  him.  It  can  do  much, 
but  how  do  you  suppose  he  finds  it  out ; 
what  instincts  or  accidents  guide  him  } 
How  does  a  cat  know  when  to  eat  catnip  ? 
Why  do  western  bred  cattle  avoid  loco 
weed,  and  strangers  eat  it  and  go  mad } 
One  might  suppose  that  in  a  time  of  famine 
the  Paiutes  digged  wild  parsnip  in  meadow 
233 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

corners  and  died  from  eating  it,  and  so 
learned  to  produce  death  swiftly  and  at 
will.  But  how  did  they  learn,  repenting 
in  the  last  agony,  that  animal  fat  is  the  best 
antidote  for  its  virulence ;  and  who  taught 
them  that  the  essence  of  joint  pine  {Ephe- 
dra nevadensis),  which  looks  to  have  no 
juice  in  it  of  any  sort,  is  efficacious  in 
stomachic  disorders.  But  they  so  under- 
stand and  so  use.  One  believes  it  to  be  a 
sort  of  instinct  atrophied  by  disuse  in  a 
complexer  civilization.  I  remember  very 
well  when  I  came  first  upon  a  wet  meadow 
of  yerba  mansa,  not  knowing  its  name  or 
use.  It  looked  potent ;  the  cool,  shiny 
leaves,  the  succulent,  pink  stems  and  fruity 
bloom.  A  little  touch,  a  hint,  a  word,  and 
I  should  have  known  what  use  to  put  them 
to.  So  I  felt,  unwilling  to  leave  it  until  we 
had  come  to  an  understanding.  So  a  mu- 
234 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

sician  might  have  felt  in  the  presence  of 
an  instrument  known  to  be  within  his  pro- 
vince, but  beyond  his  power.  It  was  with 
the  relieved  sense  of  having  shaped  a  long 
surmise  that  I  watched  the  Sefiora  Ro- 
mero make  a  poultice  of  it  for  my  burned 
hand. 

On,  down  from  the  lower  lakes  to  the 
village  weirs,  the  brown  and  golden  disks  of 
helenum  have  beauty  as  a  sufficient  excuse 
for  being.  The  plants  anchor  out  on  tiny 
capes,  or  mid-stream  islets,  with  the  nearly 
sessile  radicle  leaves  submerged.  The 
fiowers  keep  up  a  constant  trepidation  in 
time  with  the  hasty  water  beating  at  their 
stems,  a  quivering,  instinct  with  life,  that 
seems  always  at  the  point  of  breaking  into 
flight ;  just  as  the  babble  of  the  water- 
courses always  approaches  articulation  but 
never  quite  achieves  it.  Although  of  wide 
235 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

range  the  helenum  never  makes  itself  com- 
mon through  profusion,  and  may  be  looked 
for  in  the  same  places  from  year  to  year. 
Another  lake  dweller  that  comes  down  to 
the  ploughed  lands  is  the  red  columbine  (C. 
truncata).  It  requires  no  encouragement 
other  than  shade,  but  grows  too  rank  in  the 
summer  heats  and  loses  its  wildwood  grace. 
A  common  enough  orchid  in  these  parts  is 
the  false  lady's  slipper  {Epipactis gigantea), 
one  that  springs  up  by  any  water  where 
there  is  sufficient  growth  of  other  sorts  to 
give  it  countenance.  It  seems  to  thrive 
best  in  an  atmosphere  of  suffocation. 

The  middle  Sierras  fall  off  abruptly  east- 
ward toward  the  high  valleys.  Peaks  of 
the  fourteen  thousand  class,  belted  with 
sombre  swathes  of  pine,  rise  almost  direct- 
ly from  the  bench  lands  with  no  foothill 
approaches.  At  the  lower  edge  of  the 
236 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

bench  or  mesa  the  land  falls  away,  often 
by  a  fault,  to  the  river  hollows,  and  along 
the  drop  one  looks  for  springs  or  intermit- 
tent swampy  swales.  Here  the  plant  world 
resembles  a  little  the  lake  gardens,  modified 
by  altitude  and  the  use  the  town  folk  put 
it  to  for  pasture.  Here  are  cress,  blue 
violets,  potentilla,  and,  in  the  damp  of  the 
willow  fence-rows,  white  false  asphodels. 
I  am  sure  we  make  too  free  use  of  this  word 
false  in  naming  plants  —  false  mallow,  false 
lupine,  and  the  like.  The  asphodel  is  at 
least  no  falsifier,  but  a  true  lily  by  all  the 
heaven-set  marks,  though  small  of  flower 
and  run  mostly  to  leaves,  and  should  have 
a  name  that  gives  it  credit  for  growing  up 
in  such  celestial  semblance.  Native  to  the 
mesa  meadows  is  a  pale  iris,  gardens  of  it 
acres  wide,  that  in  the  spring  season  of  full 
bloom  make  an  airy  fluttering  as  of  azure 
237 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

\vins:s.  Sin2:le  flowers  are  too  thin  and 
sketchy  of  outline  to  affect  the  imagination, 
but  the  full  fields  have  the  misty  blue  of 
mirage  waters  rolled  across  desert  sand, 
and  quicken  the  senses  to  the  anticipation 
of  things  ethereal.  A  very  poet's  flower,  I 
thought;  not  fit  for  gathering  up,  and 
proving  a  nuisance  in  the  pastures,  there- 
fore needing  to  be  the  more  loved.  And 
one  day  I  caught  Winnenap'  drawing  out 
from  mid  leaf  a  fine  strong  fibre  for  making 
snares.  The  jpordersjof  the  iris  fields  are 
pure  gold^neai-ly  sessile  buttercups  and  a 
creeping-stemmed  composite  of  a  redder 
hue.  I  am  convinced  that  English-speak- 
ing children  will  always  have  buttercups. 
If  they  do  not  light  upon  the  original  com- 
panion of  little  frogs  they  will  take  the  next 
best  and  cherish  it  accordingly.  I  find  five 
unrelated  species  loved  by  that  name,  and 
238 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

as  many  more  and  as  inappropriately  called 
cowslips. 

By  every  mesa  spring  one  may  expect  to 
find  a  single  shrub  of  the  buckthorn,  called 
of  old  time  Cascara  sagrada  —  the  sacred 
bark.  Up  in  the  canons,  within  the  limit 
of  the  rains,  it  seeks  rather  a  stony  slope, 
but  in  the  dry  valleys  is  not  found  away 
from  water  borders. 

In  all  the  valleys  and  along  the  desert 
edges  of  the  west  are  considerable  areas  of 
soil  sickly  with  alkali-collecting  pools,  black 
and  evil-smelling  like  old  blood.  Very  little 
grows  hereabout  but  thick-leaved  pickle 
weed.  Curiously  enough,  in  this  stiff  mud, 
along  roadways  where  there  is  frequently 
a  little  leakage  from  canals,  grows  the  only 
western  representative  of  the  true  helio- 
tropes {He Ho tr opium  curassavicum).  It  has 
flowers  of  faded  white,  foliage  of  faded 
239 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

green,  resembling  the  "  live-for-ever  "  of  old 
gardens  and  graveyards,  but  even  less  at- 
tractive. After  so  much  schooling  in  the 
virtues  of  water-seeking  plants,  one  is  not 
surprised  to  learn  that  its  mucilaginous  sap 
has  healing  powers. 

Last  and  inevitable  resort  of  overflow 
waters  is  the  tulares,  great  wastes  of  reeds 
{Jitnctis)  in  sickly,  slow  streams.  The 
reeds,  called  tules,  are  ghostly  pale  in 
winter,  in  summer  deep  poisonous-looking 
green,  the  waters  thick  and  brown;  the 
reed  beds  breaking  into  dingy  pools,  clumps 
of  rotting  willows,  narrow  winding  water 
lanes  and  sinking  paths.  The  tules  grow 
inconceivably  thick  in  places,  standing  man- 
high  above  the  water;  cattle,  no,  not  any 
fish  nor  fowl  can  penetrate  them.  Old 
stalks  succumb  slowly ;  the  bed  soil  is  quag- 
mire, settling  with  the  weight  as  it  fills 
240 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 

and  fills.  Too  slowly  for  counting  they 
raise  little  islands  from  the  bog  and  reclaim 
the  land.  The  waters  pushed  out  cut 
deeper  channels,  gnaw  off  the  edges  of  the 
solid  earth. 

The  tulares  are  full  of  mystery  and  ma- 
laria. That  is  why  we  have  meant  tc(^ 
explore  them  and  have  never  done  so.  It 
must  be  a  happy  mystery.  So  you  would 
think  to  hear  the  redwinged  blackbirds 
proclaim  it  clear  March  mornings.  Flocks 
of  them,  and  every  flock  a  myriad,  shelter 
in  the  dry,  whispering  stems.  They  make 
little  arched  runways  deep  into  the  heart 
of  the  tule  beds.  Miles  across  the  valley 
one  hears  the  clamor  of  their  high,  keen 
flutings  in  the  mating  weather. 

Wild  fowl,  quacking  hordes  of  them,  nest 
in    the   tulares.     Any   day's   venture    will 
raise  from   open  shallows   the  great  blue 
241 


OTHER    WATER    BORDERS 


heron  on  his  hollow  wings.  Chill  evenings 
the  mallard  drakes  cry  continually  from  the 
glassy  pools,  the  bittern's  hollow  boom  rolls 
along  the  water  paths.  Strange  and  far- 
flown  fowl  drop  down  against  the  saffron, 
autumn  sky.  All  day  wings  beat  above  it 
hazy  with  speed ;  long  flights  of  cranes 
glimmer  in  the  twilight.  By  night  one 
wakes  to  hear  the  clanging  geese  go  over. 
One  wishes  for,  but  gets  no  nearer  speech 
from  those  the  reedy  fens  have  swallowed 
up.  What  they  do  there,  how  fare,  what 
find,  is  the  secret  of  the  tulares. 


NURSLINGS   OF   THE   SKY 


NURSLINGS    OF   THE   SKY 

CHOOSE  a  hill  country  for  storms. 
There  all  the  business  of  the  weather 
is  carried  on  above  your  horizon  and  loses 
its  terror  in  familiarity.  When  you  come 
to  think  about  it,  the  disastrous  storms  are 
on  the  levels,  sea  or  sand  or  plains.  There 
you  get  only  a  hint  of  what  is  about  to  hap- 
pen, the  fume  of  the  gods  rising  from  their 
meeting  place  under  the  rim  of  the  world ; 
and  when  it  breaks  upon  you  there  is  no 
stay  nor  shelter.  The  terrible  mewings 
and  mouthings  of  a  Kansas  wind  have  the 
added  terror  of  viewlessness.  You  are 
lapped  in  them  like  uprooted  grass ;  sus- 
pect them  of  a  personal  grudge.  But  the 
storms  of  hill  countries  have  other  busi- 
ness. They  scoop  watercourses,  manure 
245 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

the  pines,  twist  them  to  a  finer  fibre,  fit  the 
firs  to  be  masts  and  spars,  and,  if  you  keep 
reasonably  out  of  the  track  of  their  affairs, 
do  you  no  harm. 

They  have  habits  to  be  learned,  appointed 
paths,  seasons,  and  warnings,  and  they  leave 
you  in  no  doubt  about  their  performances. 
One  who  builds  his  house  on  a  water  scar 
or  the  rubble  of  a  steep  slope  must  take 
chances.  So  they  did  in  Overtown  who 
built  in  the  wash  of  Argus  water,  and  at 
Kearsarge  at  the  foot  of  a  steep,  treeless 
swale.  After  twenty  years  Argus  water  rose 
in  the  wash  against  the  frail  houses,  and 
the  piled  snows  of  Kearsarge  slid  down 
at  a  thunder  peal  over  the  cabins  and  the 
camp,  but  you  could  conceive  that  it  was 
the  fault  of  neither  the  water  nor  the  snow. 

The  first  effect  of  cloud  study  is  a  sense 
of  presence  and  intention  in  storm  pro- 
246 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

cesses.  Weather  does  not  happen.  It  is 
Jhe  visible  manifestation  of  the  Spirit  mov- 
ing itself  in  the  void.  It  gathers  itself  to- 
gether under  the  heavens ;  rains,  snows, 
yearns  mightily  in  wind,  smiles ;  and  the 
Weather  Bureau,  situated  advantageously 
for  that  very  business,  taps  the  record  on 
his  instruments  and  going  out  on  the 
streets  denies  his  God,  not  having  gathered 
the  sense  of  what  he  has  seen.  Hardly 
anybody  takes  account  of  the  fact  that 
John  Muir,  who  knows  more  of  mountain 
storms  than  any  other,  is  a  devout  man. 

Of  the  high  Sierras  choose  the  neigh- 
borhood of  the  splintered  peaks  about  the 
Kern  and  King's  river  divide  for  storm 
study,  or  the  short,  wide-mouthed  canons 
opening  eastward  on  high  valleys.  Days 
when  the  hollows  are  steeped  in  a  warm, 
winey  flood  the  clouds  come  walking  on 
247 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

the  floor  of  heaven,  flat  and  pearly  gray 
beneath,  rounded  and  pearly  white  above. 
They  gather  flock-wise,  moving  on  the  level 
currents  that  roll  about  the  peaks,  lock 
hands  and  settle  with  the  cooler  air,  draw- 
ing a  veil  about  those  places  where  they  do 
their  work.  If  their  meeting  or  parting 
takes  place  at  sunrise  or  sunset,  as  it  often 
does,  one  gets  the  splendor  of  the  apoca- 
lypse. There  will  be  cloud  pillars  miles 
high,  snow-capped,  glorified,  and  preserv- 
ing an  orderly  perspective  before  the  un- 
barred door  of  the  sun,  or  perhaps  mere 
ghosts  of  clouds  that  dance  to  some  pied 
piper  of  an  unfelt  wind.  But  be  it  day  or 
night,  once  they  have  settled  to  their  work, 
one  sees  from  the  valley  only  the  blank 
wall  of  their  tents  stretched  along  the 
ranges.  To  get  the  real  effect  of  a  moun- 
tain storm  you  must  be  inside. 
248 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

One  who  goes  often  into  a  hill  country 
learns  not  to  say :  What  if  it  should  rain  ? 
It  always  does  rain  somewhere  among  the 
peaks:  the  unusual  thing  is  that  one  should 
escape  it.  You  might  suppose  that  if  you 
took  any  account  of  plant  contrivances  to 
save  their  pollen  powder  against  showers. 
Note  how  many  there  are  deep-throated 
and  bell-flowered  like  the  pentstemons,  how 
many  have  nodding  pedicels  as  the  colum- 
bine, how  many  grow  in  copse  shelters  and 
grow  there  only.  There  is  keen  delight  in 
the  quick  showers  of  summer  caiions,  with 
the  added  comfort,  born  of  experience,  of 
knowing  that  no  harm  comes  of  a  wetting 
at  high  altitudes.  The  day  is  warm ;  a 
white  cloud  spies  over  the  cafion  wall,  slips 
up  behind  the  ridge  to  cross  it  by  some 
windy  pass,  obscures  your  sun.  Next  you 
hear  the  rain  drum  on  the  broad-leaved 
249 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

hellebore,  and  beat  down  the  mimulus  be- 
side the  brook.  You  shelter  on  the  lee  of 
some  strong  pine  with  shut-winged  butter- 
flies and  merry,  fiddling  creatures  of  the 
wood.  Runnels  of  rain  water  from  the 
glacier-slips  swirl  through  the  pine  needles 
into  rivulets ;  the  streams  froth  and  rise  in 
their  banks.  The  sky  is  white  with  cloud; 
the  sky  is  gray  with  rain ;  the  sky  is  clear. 
The  summer  showers  leave  no  wake. 

Such  as  these  follow  each  other  day  by 
day  for  weeks  in  August  weather.  Some- 
times they  chill  suddenly  into  wet  snow 
that  packs  about  the  lake  gardens  clear  to 
the  blossom  frills,  and  melts  away  harm- 
lessly. Sometimes  one  has  the  good  for- 
tune from  a  heather -grown  headland  to 
watch  a  rain  -  cloud  forming  in  mid-air. 
Out  over  meadow  or  lake  reQ:ion  begins  a 
little  darkling  of  the  sky,  —  no  cloud,  no 
250 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

wind,  just  a  smokiness  such  as  spirits  ma- 
terialize from  in  witch  stories. 

It  rays  out  and  draws  to  it  some  floating 
films  from  secret  caiions.  Rain  begins, 
"  slow  dropping  veil  of  thinnest  lawn ; "  a 
wind  comes  up  and  drives  the  formless 
thing  across  a  meadow,  or  a  dull  lake  pit- 
ted by  the  glancing  drops,  dissolving  as  it 
drives.     Such  rains  relieve  like  tears. 

The  same  season  brings  the  rains  that 
have  work  to  do,  ploughing  storms  that 
alter  the  face  of  things.  These  come  with 
thunder  and  the  play  of  live  fire  along  the 
rocks.  They  come  with  great  winds  that 
try  the  pines  for  their  work  upon  the  seas 
and  strike  out  the  unfit  They  shake 
down  avalanches  of  splinters  from  sky-line 
pinnacles  and  raise  up  sudden  floods  like 
battle  fronts  in  the  cafions  against  towns, 
trees,  and  boulders.  They  would  be  kind 
251 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

if  they  could,  but  have  more  important 
matters.  Such  storms,  called  cloud-bursts 
by  the  country  folk,  are  not  rain,  rather 
the  spillings  of  Thor's  cup,  jarred  by  the 
Thunderer.  After  such  a  one  the  water 
that  comes  up  in  the  village  hydrants  miles 
away  is  white  with  forced  bubbles  from  the 
wind-tormented  streams. 

All  that  storms  do  to  the  face  of  the 
earth  you  may  read  in  the  geographies,  but 
not  what  they  do  to  our  contemporaries. 
I  remember  one  night  of  thunderous  rain 
made  unendurably  mournful  by  the  house- 
less cry  of  a  cougar  whose  lair,  and  perhaps 
his  family,  had  been  buried  under  a  slide  of 
broken  boulders  on  the  slope  of  Kearsarge. 
We  had  heard  the  heavy  denotation  of 
the  slide  about  the  hour  of  the  alpenglow, 
a  pale  rosy  interval  in  a  darkling  air,  and 
judged  he  must  have  come  from  hunting 
252 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

to  the  ruined  cliff  and  paced  the  night  out 
before  it,  crying  a  very  human  woe.  I  re- 
member, too,  in  that  same  season  of  storms, 
a  lake  made  milky  white  for  days,  and 
crowded  out  of  its  bed  by  clay  washed  into 
it  by  a  fury  of  rain,  with  the  trout  floating 
in  it  belly  up,  stunned  by  the  shock  of  the 
sudden  flood.  But  there  were  trout  enough 
for  what  was  left  of  the  lake  next  year  and 
the  beginning  of  a  meadow  about  its  upper 
rim.  What  taxed  me  most  in  the  wreck 
of  one  of  my  favorite  canons  by  cloud- 
burst was  to  see  a  bobcat  mother  mouth- 
ing her  drowned  kittens  in  the  ruined  lair 
built  in  the  wash,  far  above  the  limit  of  ac- 
customed waters,  but  not  far  enough  for 
the  unexpected.  After  a  time  you  get  the 
point  of  view  of  gods  about  these  things  to 
save  you  from  being  too  pitiful. 

The  great  snows  that  come  at  the  be- 
253 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

I  ginning  of  winter,  before  there  is  yet  any 
snow  except  the  perpetual  high  banks,  are 
best  worth  while  to  watch.     These  come 
often  before   the   late  bloomers   are  gone 
and  while  the  migratory  birds  are  still  in 
the  piney  woods.     Down  in  the  valley  you 
see  little  but  the  flocking  of  blackbirds  in 
the  streets,  or  the  low  flight  of  mallards 
y-over   the    tulares,    and    the    gathering   of 
clouds  behind  Williamson.     First  there  is 
a  waiting  stillness  in  the  wood;  the  pine- 
trees  creak  although  there  is  no  wind,  the 
sky  glowers,   the   firs   rock   by  the  water 
borders.     The  noise  of  the  creek  rises  in- 
sistently and  falls  off  a  full  note  like  a  child 
abashed   by  sudden   silence   in  the  room. 
This  changing  of  the  stream-tone  following 
tardily  the  changes  of  the  sun  on  melting 
snows  is  most  meaningful  of  wood  notes. 
After  it  runs  a  little  trumpeter  wind  to  cry 
254 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

the  wild  creatures  to  their  holes.  Some- 
times the  warning  hangs  in  the  air  for  days  ^ 
with  increasing  stillness.  Only  Clark's  jJ 
crow  and  the  strident  jays  make  light  of  it; 
only  they  can  afford  to.  The  cattle  get 
down  to  the  foothills  and  ground  inhabit- 
ino^  creatures  make  fast  their  doors.  It 
grows  chill,  blind  clouds  fumble  in  the 
caiions;  there  will  be  a  roll  of  thunder, 
perhaps,  or  a  flurry  of  rain,  but  mostly  the 
snow  is  born  in  the  air  with  quietness  afid 
the  sense  of  strong  white  pinions  softly 
stirred.  It  increases,  is  wet  and  clogging, 
and  makes  a  white  night  of  midday. 

There  is  seldom  any  wind  with  first 
snows,  more  often  rain,  but  later,  when 
there  is  already  a  smooth  foot  or  two  over 
all  the  slopes,  the  drifts  begin.  The  late 
snows  are  fine  and  dry,  mere  ice  granules 
at  the  wind's  will.  Keen  mornings  after 
255 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

a  storm  they  are  blown  out  in  wreaths  and 
banners  from  the  high  ridges  sifting  into 
the  canons. 

Once  in  a  year  or  so  we  have  a  "  big 
snow."  The  cloud  tents  are  widened  out 
to  shut  in  the  valley  and  an  outlying  range 
or  two  and  are  drawn  tight  against  the  sun. 
Such  a  storm  begins  warm,  with  a  dry  white 
mist  that  fills  and  fills  between  the  ridges, 
and  the  air  is  thick  with  formless  groaning. 
Now  for  days  you  get  no  hint  of  the  neigh- 
boring ranges  until  the  snows  begin  to 
lighten  and  some  shouldering  peak  lifts 
through  a  rent.  Mornings  after  the  heavy 
snows  are  steely  blue,  two-edged  with  cold, 
divinely  fresh  and  still,  and  these  are  times 
to  go  up  to  the  pine  borders.  There  you 
may  find  floundering  in  the  unstable  drifts 
"  tainted  wethers  "  of  the  wild  sheep,  faint 
from  age  and  hunger ;  easy  prey.  Even  the 
256 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 


deer  make  slow  going  in  the  thick  fresh 
snow,  and  once  we  found  a  wolverine  going 
blind  and  feebly  in  the  white  glare. 

No  tree  takes  the  snow  stress  with  such 
ease  as  the  silver  fir.  The  star-whorled, 
fan-spread  branches  droop  under  the  soft 
wreaths  —  droop  and  press  flatly  to  the 
trunk;  presently  the  point  of  overloading 
is  reached,  there  is  a  soft  sough  and  muf- 
fled dropping,  the  boughs  recover,  and  the 
weighting  goes  on  until  the  drifts  have 
reached  the  midmost  whorls  and  covered 
up  the  branches.  When,  the  snows  are 
particularly  wet  and  heavy  they  spread 
over  the  young  firs  in  green-ribbed  tents 
wherein  harbor  winter  loving  birds. 

All  storms  of  desert  hills,  except  wind 

storms,  are  impotent.    East  and  east  of  the 

Sierras  they  rise  in  nearly  parallel  ranges, 

desertward,  and  no  rain  breaks  over  them, 

257 


.//^^■^■' 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 


except  from  some  far -strayed  cloud  or 
roving  wind  from  the  California  Gulf,  and 
these  only  in  winter.  In  summer  the  sky 
travails  with  thunderings  and  the  flare  of 
sheet  lightnings  to  win  a  few  blistering  big 
drops,  and  once  in  a  lifetime  the  chance  of 
a  torrent.  But  you  have  not  known  what 
force  resides  in  the  mindless  things  until 
you  have  known  a  desert  wind.  One 
expects  it  at  the  turn  of  the  two  seasons, 
wet  and  dry,  with  electrified  tense  nerves. 
Along  the  edge  of  the  mesa  where  it  drops 
off  to  the  valley,  dust  devils  begin  to  rise 
white  and  steady,  fanning  out  at  the  top. 
like  the  genii  out  of  the  Fisherman's  bot- 
tle. One  supposes  the  Indians  might  have 
learned  the  use  of  smoke  signals  from 
these  dust  pillars  as  they  learn  most  things 
direct  from  the  tutelage  of  the  earth.  The 
air  begins  to  move  fluently,  blowing  hot 
258 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

and  cold  between  the  ranges.  Far  south 
rises  a  murk  of  sand  against  the  sky;  it 
grows,  the  wind  shakes  itself,  and  has  a 
smell  of  earth.  The  cloud  of  small  dust 
takes  on  the  color  of  gold  and  shuts  out 
the  neighborhood,  the  push  of  the  wind  is 
unsparing.  Only  man  of  all  folk  is  fool- 
ish enough  to  stir  abroad  in  it.  But  being 
in  a  house  is  really  much  worse ;  no  relief 
from,  the  dust,  and  a  great  fear  of  the 
creaking  timbers.  There  is  no  looking 
ahead  in  such  a  wind,  and  the  bite  of  the 
small  sharp  sand  on  exposed  skin  is  keener 
than  any  insect  sting.  One  might  sleep, 
for  the  lapping  of  the  wind  wears  one  to 
the  point  of  exhaustion  very  soon,  but 
there  is  dread,  in  open  sand  stretches  some- 
times justified,  of  being  over  blown  by  the 
drift.  It  is  hot,  dry,  fretful  work,  but  by 
going  along  the  ground  with  the  wind 
259 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

behind,  one  may  come  upon  strange  things 
in  its  tumultuous  privacy.  I  like  these 
truces  of  wind  and  heat  that  the  desert 
makes,  otherwise  I  do  not  know  how  I 
should  come  by  so  many  acquaintances 
with  furtive  folk.  I  like  to  see  hawks  sit- 
ting daunted  in  shallow  holes,  not  daring 
to  spread  a  feather,  and  doves  in  a  row  by 
the  prickle  bushes,  and  shut-eyed  cattle, 
turned  tail  to  the  wind  in  a  patient  doze. 
I  like  the  smother  of  sand  among  the 
dunes,  and  finding  small  coiled  snakes  in 
open  places,  but  I  never  like  to  come  in  a 
wind  upon  the  silly  sheep.  The  wind  robs 
them  of  what  wit  they  had,  and  they  seem 
never  to  have  learned  the  self-induced  hyp- 
notic stupor  with  which  most  wild  things 
endure  weather  stress.  I  have  never  heard 
that  the  desert  winds  brought  harm  to  any 
other  than  the  wandering  shepherds  and 
260 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

their  flocks.  Once  below  Pastaria  Little 
Pete  showed  me  bones  sticking  out  of  the 
sand  where  a  flock  of  two  hundred  had 
been  smothered  in  a  bygone  wind.  In 
many  places  the  four-foot  posts  of  a  cattle 
fence  had  been  buried  by  the  wind-blown 
dunes. 

It  is  enough  occupation,  when  no  storm 
is  brewing,  to  watch  the  cloud  currents  and 
the  chambers  of  the  sky.  From  Kearsarge, 
say,  you  look  over  Inyo  and  find  pink  soft 
cloud  masses  asleep  on  the  level  desert  air; 
south  of  you  hurries  a  white  troop  late  to 
some  gathering  of  their  kind  at  the  back 
of  Oppapago;  nosing  the  foot  of  Waban, 
a  woolly  mist  creeps  south.  In  the  clean, 
smooth  paths  of  the  middle  sky  and  highest 
up  in  air,  drift,  unshepherded,  small  flocks 
ranging  contrarily.  .You  will  find  the 
proper  names  of  these  things  in  the  reports 
261 


NURSLINGS    OF    THE    SKY 

of  the  Weather  Bureau  —  cirrus,  cumulus, 
and  the  like  —  and  charts  that  will  teach  by 
study  when  to  sow  and  take  up  crops.  It  is 
astonishins:  the  trouble  men  will  be  at  to 
find  out  when  to  plant  potatoes,  and  gloze 
over  the  eternal  meaning  of  the  skies. 
You  have  to  beat  out  for  yourself  many 
mornings  on  the  windly  headlands  the 
sense  of  the  fact  that  you  get  the  same 
rainbow  in  the  cloud  drift  over  Waban  and 
the  spray  of  your  garden  hose.  And  not 
necessarily  then  do  you  live  up  to  it. 


I 


THE    LITTLE   TOWN    OF   THE 
GRAPE   VINES 


THE    LITTLE   TOWN    OF   THE 
GRAPE    VINES 

THERE  are  still  some  places  in  the 
west  where  the  quails  cry  '' ciiidado'' \ 
where  all  the  speech  is  soft,  all  the  man- 
ners gentle ;  where  all  the  dishes  have 
chile  in  them,  and  they  make  more  of  the 
Sixteenth  of  September  than  they  do  of 
the  Fourth  of  July.  I  mean  in  particular 
El  Pueblo  de  Las  Uvas.  Where  it  lies, 
how  to  come  at  it,  you  will  not  get  from 
me;  rather  would  I  show  you  the  heron's 
nest  in  the  tulares.  It  has  a  peak  behind 
it,  glinting  above  the  tamarack  pines,  above 
a  breaker  of  ruddy  hills  that  have  a  long 
slope  valley-wards  and  the  shoreward  steep 
of  waves  toward  the  Sierras. 

Below  the   Town  of  the  Grape  Vines, 
265 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

which  shortens  to  Las  Uvas  for  common 
use,  the  land  dips  away  to  the  river  pas- 
tures and  the  tulares.  It  shrouds  under 
a  twilight  thicket  of  vines,  under  a  dome  of 
cottonwood-trees,  drowsy  and  murmurous 
as  a  hive.  Hereabouts  are  some  strips  of 
tillage  and  the  headgates  that  dam  up  the 
creek  for  the  village  weirs ;  upstream  you 
catch  the  growl  of  the  arrastra.  Wild  vines 
that  begin  among  the  willows  lap  over  to 
the  orchard  rows,  take  the  trellis  and  roof- 
tree. 

There  is  another  town  above  Las  Uvas 
/that  merits  some  attention,  a  town  of  arches 
<^  and  airy  crofts,  full  of  linnets,  blackbirds, 
y  fruit  bird&,  small  sharp  hawks,  and  mock- 
ingbirds that  sing  by  night.     They  pour 
out  piercing,  unendurably  sweet  cavatinas 
above  the  fragrance  of  bloom  and  musky 
smell  of  fruit.     Singing  is  in  fact  the  busi- 
266 


0 

THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF   THE    GRAPE    VINES 

ness  of  the  night  at  Las  Uvas  as  sleeping 
is  for  midday.  When  the  moon  comes 
over  the  mountain  wall  new-washed  from 


the  sea,  and  the  shadows  lie  like  lace  on 
the^^stamped  floors  of  the  patios,  from  recess 
to  recess  of  the  vine  tangle  runs  the  thrum 
of  guitars  and  the  voice  of  singing. 

At  Las  Uvas  they  keep  up  all  the  good 
customs  brought  out  of  Old  Mexico  or 
bred  in  a  lotus-eating  land ;  drink,  and  are 
merry  and  look  out  for  something  to  eat 
afterward ;  have  children,  nine  or  ten  to  a 
family,  have  cock-fights,  keep  the  siesta, 
smoke  cigarettes  and  wait  for  the  sun  to 
go  down.  And  always  they  dance ;  at  dusk 
on  the  smooth  adobe  floors,  afternoons 
under  the  trellises  where  the  earth  is  damp 
and  has  a  fruity  smell.  A  betrothal,  a 
wedding,  or  a  christening,  or  the  mere 
proximity  of  a  guitar  is  sufficient  occasion; 
267 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

and   if   the   occasion    lacks,   send   for   the 
guitar  and  dance  anyway. 

All  this  requires  explanation.  Antonio 
Sevadra,  drifting  this  way  from  Old  Mexico 
with  the  flood  that  poured  into  the  Tappan 
district  after  the  first  notable  strike,  dis- 
covered La  Golondrina.  It  was  a  gener- 
ous lode  and  Tony  a  good  fellow ;  to  work 
it  he  brought  in  all  the  Sevadras,  even  to 
the  twice-removed ;  all  the  Castros  who 
were  his  wife's  family,  all  the  Saises,  Ro- 
meros, and  Eschobars,  —  the  relations  of 
his  relations-in-law.  There  you  have  the 
beginning  of  a  pretty  considerable  town. 
To  these  accrued  much  of  the  Spanish 
California  float  swept  out  of  the  southwest 
by  eastern  enterprise.  They  slacked  away 
again  when  the  price  of  silver  went  down, 
and  the  ore  dwindled  in  La  Golondrina. 
All  the  hot  eddy  of  mining  life  swept  away 
268 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

from  that  corner  of  the  hills,  but  there 
were  always  those  too  idle,  too  poor  to 
move,  or  too  easily  content  with  El  Pueblo 
de  Las  Uvas. 

Nobody  comes  nowadays  to  the  town  of 
the  grape  vines  except,  as  we  say,  "  with 
the  breath  of  crying,"  but  of  these  enough. 
All  the  low  sills  run  over  with  small  heads. 
Ah,  ah !  There  is  a  kind  of  pride  in  that 
if  you  did  but  know  it,  to  have  your  baby 
every  year  or  so  as  the  time  sets,  and  keep 
a  full  breast.  So  great  a  blessing  as  mar- 
riage is  easily  come  by.  It  is  told  of  Ruy 
Garcia  that  when  he  went  for  his  marriage 
license  he  lacked  a  dollar  of  the  clerk's 
fee,  but  borrowed  it  of  the  sheriff,  who  ex- 
pected reelection  and  exhibited  thereby  a 
commendable  thrift. 

Of  what  account  is  it  to  lack  meal  or 
meat  when  you  may  have  it  of  any  neigh- 
269 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

bor?  Besides,  there  is  sometimes  a  point 
of  honor  in  these  things.  Jesus  Romero, 
father  of  ten,  had  a  job  sacking  ore  in  the 
Marionette  which  he  gave  up  of  his  own 
accord.  "Eh,  why?"  said  Jesus,  "for  my 
fam'ly." 

"  It  is  so,  seiiora,"  he  said  solemnly,  "  I 
go  to  the  Marionette,  I  work,  I  eat  meat  — 
pie  —  frijoles  —  good,  ver'  good.  I  come 
home  sad'day  nigh'  I  see  my  fam'ly.  I  play 
lir  game  poker  with  the  boys,  have  HI'  drink 
wine,  my  money  all  gone.  My  family  have 
no  money,  nothing  eat.  All  time  I  work  at 
mine  I  eat,  good,  ver'  good  grub.  I  think 
sorry  for  my  fam'ly.  No,  no,  senora,  I  no 
work  no  more  that  Marionette,  I  stay  with 
my  fam'ly."  The  wonder  of  it  is,  I  think, 
that  the  family  had  the  same  point  of  view. 

Every  house  in  the  town  of  the  vines  has 
its  garden  pldt,  corn  and  brown  beans  and 
270 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

a  row  of  peppers  reddening  in  the  sun  ;  and 
in  damp  borders  of  the  irrigating  ditches 
clumps  of  yerba  santa,  horehound,  catnip, 
and  spikenard,  wholesome  herbs  and  cura- 
tive, but  if  no  peppers  then  nothing  at  all. 
You  will  have  for  a  holiday  dinner,  in  Las 
Uvas,  soup  with  meat  balls  and  chile  in  it, 
chicken  with  chile,  rice  with  chile,  fried 
beans  with  more  chile,  enchilada,  which  is 
corn  cake  with  a  sauce  of  chile  and  to- 
matoes, onion,  grated  cheese,  and  olives, 
and  for  a  relish  chile  tepines  passed  about 
in  a  dish,  all  of  which  is  comfortable  and 
corrective  to  the  stomach.  You  will  have 
wine  which  every  man  makes  for  himself, 
of  good  body  and  inimitable  bouquet,  and 
sweets  that  are  not  nearly  so  nice  as  they 
look. 

There  are  two  occasions  when  you  may 
count  on  that  kind  of  a  meal ;  always  on 
271 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

the   Sixteenth   of   September,  and  on  the 
two-yearly  visits   of    Father  Shannon.     It 
is   absurd,  of  course,  that   El    Pueblo   de 
/  Las  Uvas  should  have  an  Irish  priest,  but 
V  Black  Rock,  Minton,  Jimville,  and  all  that 
country  round  do  not  find  it  so.     Father 
/  Shannon  visits  them  all,  waits  by  the  Red 
'  Butte   to  confess   the  shepherds   who   go 
through  with  their  flocks,  carries  blessing 
to  small  and  isolated  mines,  and  so  in  the 
course  of  a  year  or  so   works   around   to 
Las  Uvas  to  bury  and  marry  and  christen. 
Then   all   the  little  graves  in  the  Campo 
Santo  are  brave  with  tapers,  the  brown  pine 
headboards  blossom  like  Aaron's  rod  with 
paper    roses   and   bright    cheap    prints    of 
Our  Lady  of  Sorrows.     Then  the  Sefiora 
Sevadra,  who  thinks  herself  elect  of  heaven 
for  that  ofHce,  gathers  up  the  original  sin- 
ners, the  little  Elijias,  Lolas,  Manuelitas, 
272 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 


Joses,  and  Felipes,  by  dint  of  adjurations 
and  sweets  smuggled  into  small  perspiring 
palms,  to  fit  them  for  the  Sacrament. 

I  used  to  peek  in  at  them,  never  so  softly, 
in  Dona  Ina's  living-room ;  Raphael-eyed 
little  imps,  going  sidewise  on  their  knees 
to  rest  them  from  the  bare  floor,  candles 
lit  on  the  mantel  to  give  a  religious  air, 
and  a  great  sheaf  of  wild  bloom  before  the 
Holy  Family.  Come  Sunday  they  set  out 
the  altar  in  the  schoolhouse,  with  the  fine- 
drawn altar  cloths,  the  beaten  silver  candle- 
sticks, and  the  wax  images,  chief  glory  of 
Las  Uvas,  brought  up  mule-back  from  Old 
Mexico  forty  years  ago.  All  in  white  the 
communicants  go  up  two  and  two  in  a 
hushed,  sweet  awe  to  take  the  body  of  their 
Lord,  and  Tomaso,  who  is  priest's  boy,  tries 
not  to  look  unduly  puffed  up  by  his  office. 
After  that  you  have  dinner  and  a  bottle  of 
273 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

wine  that  ripened  on  the  sunny  slope  of 
Escondito.  All  the  week  Father  Shannon 
has  shriven  his  people,  who  bring  clean 
conscience  to  the  betterment  of  appetite, 
and  the  Father  sets  them  an  example. 
Father  Shannon  is  rather  big  about  the 
middle  to  accommodate  the  large  laugh  that 
lives  in  him,  but  a  most  shrewd  searcher 
of  hearts.  It  is  reported  that  one  derives 
comfort  from  his  confessional,  and  I  for 
my  part  believe  it. 

The  celebration  of  the  Sixteenth,  though 
it  comes  every  year,  takes  as  long  to  pre- 
pare for  as  Holy  Communion.  The  sefior- 
itas  have  each  a  new  dress  apiece,  the 
sefioras  a  new  rebosa.  The  young  gentle- 
men have  new  silver  trimmings  to  their 
sombreros,  unspeakable  ties,  silk  handker- 
chiefs, and  new  leathers  to  their  spurs.  At 
this  time  when  the  peppers  glow  in  the 
274 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF   THE    GRAPE    VINES 

gardens  and  the  young  quail  cry  "  cuidado',' 
"  have  a  care ! "  you  can  hear  the  plu7np, 
plump  of  the  metate  from  the  alcoves  of  the 
vines  where  comfortable  old  dames,  whose 
experience  gives  them  the  touch  of  art,  are 
pounding  out  corn  for  tamales. 

School-teachers  from  abroad  have  tried 
before  now  at  Las  Uvas  to  have  school 
begin  on  the  first  of  September,  but  got 
nothins:  else  to  stir  in  the  heads  of  the  little 
Castros,  Garcias,  and  Romeros  but  feasts 
and  cock-fights  until  after  the  Sixteenth. 
Perhaps  you  need  to  be  told  that  this  is 
the  anniversary  of  the  Republic,  when 
liberty  awoke  and  cried  in  the  provinces 
of  Old  Mexico.  You  are  aroused  at  mid- 
night to  hear  them  shouting  in  the  streets, 
^'Vive  la  Libertadf'  answered  from  the 
houses  and  the  recesses  of  the  vines,  "  Vive 
la  Mexico  I "  At  sunrise  shots  are  fired 
275 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

commemorating  the  tragedy  of  unhappy 
Maximilian,  and  then  music,  the  noblest  of 
national  hymns,  as  the  great  flag  of  Old 
Mexico  floats  up  the  flag-pole  in  the  bare 
little  plaza  of  shabby  Las  Uvas.  The  sun 
over  Pine  Mountain  greets  the  eagle  of 
Montezuma  before  it  touches  the  vineyards 
and  the  town,  and  the  day  begins  with  a 
great  shout.  By  and  by  there  will  be  a 
reading  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence and  an  address  punctured  hy  vives  ; 
all  the  town  in  its  best  dress,  and  some  ex- 
hibits of  horsemanship  that  make  lathered 
bits  and  bloodly  spurs ;  also  a  cock-fight. 

By  night  there  will  be  dancing,  and  such 
music !  old  Santos  to  play  the  flute,  a  little 
lean  man  with  a  saintly  countenance,  young 
Garcia  whose  guitar  has  a  soul,  and  Car- 
rasco  with  the  violin.  They  sit  on  a  high 
platform  above  the  dancers  in  the  candle 
276 


CY  NIGHT    THERE   WILL    BE   DANCING 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 


flare,  backed  by  the  red,  white,  and  green  of 
Old  Mexico,  and  play  fervently  such  music 
as  you  will  not  hear  otherwhere. 

At  midnight  the  flag  comes  down.  Count 
yourself  at  a  loss  if  you  are  not  moved  by 
that  performance.  Pine  Mountain  watches 
whitely  overhead,  shepherd  fires  glow 
strongly  on  the  glooming  hills.  The  plaza, 
the  bare  glistening  pole,  the  dark  folk,  the 
bright  dresses,  are  lit  ruddily  by  a  bonfire. 
It  leaps  up  to  the  eagle  flag,  dies  down,  the 
music  begins  softly  and  aside.  They  play 
airs  of  old  longing  and  exile ;  slowly  out  of 
the  dark  the  flag  drops  down,  bellying  and 
falling  with  the  midnight  draught.  Some- 
times a  hymn  is  sung,  always  there  are 
tears.  The  flag  is  down ;  Tony  Sevadra 
has  received  it  in  his  arms.  The  music 
strikes  a  barbaric  swelling  tune,  another 
flag  begins  a  slow  ascent,  —  it  takes  a 
277 


IHE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

breath  or  two  to  realize  that  they  are  both, 
flag  and  tune,  the  Star  Spangled  Banner, 
—  a  volley  is  fired,  we  are  back,  if  you 
please,  in  California  of  America.  Every 
youth  who  has  the  blood  of  patriots  in  him 
lays  ahold  on  Tony  Sevadra 's  flag,  happiest 
if  he  can  sfet  a  corner  of  it.  The  music 
goes  before,  the  folk  fall  in  two  and  two, 
singing.  They  sing  everything,  America, 
the  Marseillaise,  for  the  sake  of  the  French 
shepherds  hereabout,  the  hymn  of  Cuba, 
and  the  Chilian  national  air  to  comfort 
two  families  of  that  land.  The  flag  goes 
to  Dona  Ina's,  with  the  candlesticks  and 
the  altar  cloths,  then  Las  Uvas  eats  tamales 
and  dances  the  sun  up  the  slope  of  Pine 
Mountain. 

You  are  not  to  suppose  that  they  do  not 
keep  the  Fourth,  Washington's  Birthday, 
and  Thanksgiving  at  the  town  of  the  grape 
278 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF   THE    GRAPE    VINES 

vines.  These  make  excellent  occasions 
for  quitting  work  and  dancing,  but  the 
Sixteenth  is  the  holiday  of  the  heart.  On 
Memorial  Day  the  graves  have  garlands 
and  new  pictures  of  the  saints  tacked  to 
the  headboards.  There  is  great  virtue  in 
an  Ave  said  in  the  Camp  of  the  Saints. 
I  like  that  name  which  the  Spanish  speak- 
ing people  give  to  the  garden  of  the  dead, 
Campo  Santo,  as  if  it  might  be  some  bed 
of  healing  from  which  blind  souls  and 
sinners  rise  up  whole  and  praising  God. 
Sometimes  the  speech  of  simple  folk  hints 
at  truth  the  understanding  does  not  reach. 
I  am  persuaded  only  a  complex  soul  can  get 
any  good  of  a  plain  religion.  Your  earth- (^^ 
born_is_a_^et  and  a  symbolist.  We  breed 
in  an_environment  of  asphalt  pavements 
a  body  of  people  whose  creeds  are  chiefly 
restrictions  against  other  people's  way  of 
279 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

life,  and  have  kitchens  and  latrines  under 
the  same  roof  that  houses  their  God.  Such 
as  these  go  to  church  to  be  edified,  but  at 
y  Las  Uvas  they  go  for  pure  worship  and  to 
entreat  their  God.  The  logical  conclusion 
of  the  faith  that  every  good  gift  cometh 
from  God  is  the  open  hand  and  the  finer 
courtesy.  The  meal  done  without  buys  a 
candle  for  the  neighbor's  dead  child.  You 
do  foolishly  to  suppose  that  the  candle  does 
no  good. 

At  Las  Uvas  every  house  is  a  piece  of 
earth  —  thick  v/alled,  whitewashed  adobe 
that  keeps  the  even  temperature  of  a  cave ; 
every  man  is  an  accomplished  horseman 
and  consequently  bow-legged  ;  every  family 
keeps  dogs,  flea-bitten  mongrels  that  loll 
on  the  earthen  floors.  They  speak  a  purer 
Castilian  than  obtains  in  like  villages  of 
Mexico,  and  the  way  they  count  relationship 
280 


THE    LITTLE    TOWN    OF    THE    GRAPE    VINES 

everybody  is  more  or  less  akin.  There  is 
not  much  villainy  among  them.  What  in- 
centive to  thieving  or  killing  can  there  be 
when  there  is  little  wealth  and  that  to  be 
had  for  the  borrowing !  If  they  love  too 
hotly,  as  we  say  "  take  their  meat  before 
grace,"  so  do  their  betters.  Eh,  what!  shall 
a  man  be  a  saint  before  he  is  dead  ?  And 
besides,  Holy  Church  takes  it  out  of  you 
one  way  or  another  before  all  is  done. 
Come  away,  you  who  are  obsessed  with 
your  own  importance  in  the  scheme  of 
things,  and  have  got  nothing  you  did  not 
sweat  for,  come  away  by  the  brown  valleys 
and  full-bosomed  hills  to  the  even-breathing 
days,  to  the  kindliness,  earthiness,  ease  of 
El  Pueblo  de  Las  Uvas. 


Electrotyfed  and  f>rinted  by  H.  O.  Houghton  <5^  Co- 
Cambridge,   Mass.,  U.S.  A. 


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